500 words a day on whatever I want

coolies

Coolies (fl. 1830-1917) were Asian contract labourers, especially those brought as workers to the Americas and elsewhere after black slaves were freed. Most coolies in the British Empire came from India. Elsewhere they mainly came from China. They worked on plantations and in mines. In the US and Canada they are famous for building railroads.

The word “coolie” can also be a racial slur (or just neutral description) for a descendant of said workers, especially in the Caribbean and South Africa.

The numbers, in millions (m):

From India: 30m to 40m (1830-1913), especially to:

1m: Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Natal (South Africa), Fiji (sugar),

4m: Malaysia (tin and rubber),

2-3m: Sri Lanka (tea),

2m+: Burma.

From China: 10m to 15m (1830-1914), mostly from Guangdong and Fujian provinces. Among the places, they went to:

6m: Malaysia (tin, rubber),

Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines,

Hawaii, Cuba, Samoa, Queensland (Australia), Fiji (sugar),

Peru (guano, silver),

South Africa,

US, Canada (railroads).

Most Indians returned home. Not as many Chinese did. Many of those who stayed in the Americas married black.

Cheap food from the Americas was undercutting farmers in Europe, driving them off the land.

All told that is over 100 million people in motion, 40% of them coolies.

How coolies were different than slaves (at least on paper):

fixed-term contract, generally five years or so (sometimes unfairly extended by employers);

not hereditary;

received wages;

almost all were young men;

many signed up willingly;

many sent money back home;

many returned home.

In Cuba and Peru it was slavery in all but name from the 1840s to the 1870s. Of the Chinese sent:

80% were sent against their will (1875)

15% to 40% died during the Pacific Passage (1850s),

Over 67% died before the end of their contract (Peru, 1849-1874).

In the US, meanwhile, most came voluntarily. Those who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad were whipped, given the most dangerous work and were underpaid compared to whites, but still made good money for the times and were in better health than white workers.

On the other hand, in the 1850s Chinese women were openly sold on the docks of San Francisco. The police saw and did nothing. Chinese gangs attacked those who tried to save them from sex work. Hospitals turned the women away.

After 1853 in California, Chinese were not allowed to give testimony in court for or against a white man, which allowed whites to get away with crimes against them. In the South, however, Chinese workers were able to take employers to court and even win.

US employers used coolies to keep wages low and keep white and black workers in line. That backfired in the long run: Chinese workers were not as docile as stereotyped while white workers, who had the vote, were able to shut off Chinese immigration by 1882.

133 Responses

It’s interesting that 40% of immigrants at the height of various waves of immigration throughout the world were of Asian descent. Given that number, it’s likely that more of us in the so-called West than was previously supposed have some sort of Asian heritage — even though official census numbers can’t attest to it.

I think the exception might be Peru. Maybe some married blacks, but many married Mestizos and some married whites. Today some 20% of the Peruvian population has some Chinese Ancestry. Filipinos were the first large group to arrive in Peru and their descendants probably have mixed throughout the entire population. Peru also has many Japanese-Peruvians, but few came as coolies and many also left in the late 20th century.

Kiwi, the main period of the decline in the USA was 1882-1906 and only partially due to the men going home. However, many left in the midst of the Taiping rebellion and Punti-Hakka clan wars and may have not had a village to go back to, esp. if they had already entered the USA for a couple decades.

A large portion of the decline in the USA was due to genocide. A small portion was due to outmarrying with non-Chinese.

[…] "Coolies (fl. 1830-1917) were Asian labourers, especially those brought as indentured workers to the Americas and elsewhere after black slaves were freed. After 1853 in California, Chinese were not allowed to give testimony in court for or against a white man, which allowed whites to get away with crimes against them. In the South, however, Chinese workers were able to take employers to court and even win. US employers used coolies to keep wages low and keep white and black workers in line. That backfired in the long run: Chinese workers were not as docile as stereotyped while white workers, who had the vote, were able to shut off Chinese immigration by 1882." […]

I think it is somewhat inaccurate as Chinese Immigration post 1882 was prohibited, so there is a lot of problem with the statistics. For one thing, those statistics would severely undercount Chinese in 1880-1890 (as many Census workers did not consider them to be residents, or many of them had to hide to avoid expulsion and did not trust Census workers), and would undercount Chinese immigrants 1910-1940 due to number of immigrants who technically entered illegally during the Exclusion period. As some level of amnesty was granted after WWII, more would be available to be counted.

But I am not sure how I can find better statistics though.

Anyhow, yes, I do think that a large part of the decrease 1900-1920 was due to the aging bachelors dying off. That is for sure. Some (the survivors) did “go back to China” 1880-1900, but not so many after 1900 or so.

I’d previously read about how they were worked to death building the railroads, but I never knew that so MANY had left China. Goodness gracious!

I would like to see someone really put some research into getting the numbers on the number of workers that stayed and perhaps along the lines of Who Do You Think You Are?, trace their family tree here in America to modern day. Their story is definitely a story that needs to be told and heard, by all. Abagond, thanks for doing this research.

“The word “coolie” can also be a racial slur (or just neutral description) for a descendant of said workers, especially in the Caribbean and South Africa.”

I always thought that word was on par with the slur “nigger” and I certainly wouldn’t use it as casually as you do here. I mean once upon a time “nigger” was an acceptable term to describe ANY black worker. Hence the phrase “working like a nigger” or “working like a coolie.”

I don’t think you would say, “nigger” can be a racial slur but could also be described workers in a certain era.

Somehow it just seems wrong to me to throw the word “coolie” around so casually as if it were possibly a legitimate term like “indentured servant” or some such.

[…] "Coolies (fl. 1830-1917) were Asian labourers, especially those brought as indentured workers to the Americas and elsewhere after black slaves were freed. After 1853 in California, Chinese were not allowed to give testimony in court for or against a white man, which allowed whites to get away with crimes against them. In the South, however, Chinese workers were able to take employers to court and even win. US employers used coolies to keep wages low and keep white and black workers in line. That backfired in the long run: Chinese workers were not as docile as stereotyped while white workers, who had the vote, were able to shut off Chinese immigration by 1882." […]

“The word “coolie” can also be a racial slur (or just neutral description) for a descendant of said workers, especially in the Caribbean and South Africa.”

I always thought that word was on par with the slur “nigger” and I certainly wouldn’t use it as casually as you do here. I mean once upon a time “nigger” was an acceptable term to describe ANY black worker. Hence the phrase “working like a nigger” or “working like a coolie.”

I don’t think you would say, “nigger” can be a racial slur but could also be described workers in a certain era.

Somehow it just seems wrong to me to throw the word “coolie” around so casually as if it were possibly a legitimate term like “indentured servant” or some such.

Just my two cents.”

My practice is to use it only in a historical context, like in this post. But then again, it is hard for me to tell how offensive that is.

I’ve never perceived the word to be on par with the word “n’gger” … but then, I am not ethnically Indian because that’s who it’s used for in Jamaica, to describe a person who is ethnically Indian (we don’t use it for Chinese, that word would be “Chinee”)

In Jamaica, it’s used as a descriptive word without meaning to be offensive.. so as far as the average Jamaican is concerned, it’s not offensive…like I said, I was always lumped into the “coolie gyal” category because of my hair, regardless of my real ethnicity(s)

but I am sure Jamaican Indians think otherwise because from my understanding– my cousins who are part Indian, they don’t like the term.
After Bulanik mentioned that she found the term offensive, I asked my cousins if that word bothered them and they said “yes”

funny enough, growing up, I’ve heard plenty older brown (mixed race) and Asian older people throw the phrase ” old naygah dem” around and other non-politically correct offensive words… I think the older Jamaican Indians would not have been offended by the word “coolie” but I believe currently and with this generation of Caribbean Indian’s, they find the word offensive…

“In 1973, Guyanese writer and activist Rajkumari Singh called for a reappraisal of the word “coolie”, urging Indo-Caribbean people to identify with the word as an acknowledgement of their history, saying “Proudly say to the world: “I AM A COOLIE”. Singh’s misguided argument was perhaps a reaction to the silencing and omission of Indo-Caribbean culture in mainstream cultural narratives of the Caribbean.

in Trinidad, they do believe it is on par with the word N’gger” because the “British colonials used to refer to Indian and Chinese indentured labourers, the term “coolie” implies subservience, inferiority and degradation.”

I think black Jamaican people probably feel that it’s OK to use the word “coolie” because it’s not used with hate –it’s used to describe –it was not used to oppress the Indians nor is it used to convey hatred.

the word “n’gger” on the other hand, was used with hatred and it was also a descriptive word but it seems that the British used it indiscriminately because they called Indians “n’ggers” as well

but as I’ve seen from reading current articles, today’s Caribbean-Indians find it offensive, so I will go with that and see it as such.

My own family of “Caribbean rednecks” (if Bulanik and others remember that joke) always used the term, they still do. The use was never from a place of malice, the use had to do with conveying physical characteristics. I never knew about the history of the term until it was explained in this blog. Because I thought the term innocuous, I used it on the blog once. Bulanik expressed that the term was offensive and why. Now I know that it is an offensive term to some and won’t throw it around as my elders did.

I am most familiar with the black Jamaican usage where it seems to just be neutral description. If there is any subtext to it, it seems to be “they are no better than us”, which is nothing like what the N-word means.

I think if you are on the receiving end of a racial epithet (which “coolie” is), it might be experienced differently from the “intention” of the original user.

And a former generation might have a different connotation from a newer generation.

It is very possible that to older black Jamaicans, the term has a different meaning and usage than to succeeding generations of Indian Jamaicans.

Older generations of white Americans still use the term “oriental” assuming it has no negative connotations. But younger and even middle-aged Asian Americans experience it very differently and in a decidedly negative way.

From the little bit that I know of the term, it seems strange to sort of legitimize the term as “Asian labourers” and then say the word could be a racist term too. From older comments and conversations on the blog the term “coolie” seems to have a grimy, seedy background in different contexts. Enough to not see it as a straight term to describe a type of labourer. Others who comment here have a better contextual grip of the term than I do but that’s my two cents.

Yeah, it’s not like n****r but maybe it has a similar insult level to “Jap”. “Jap” when it is defined should be acknowledged not as shorthand G.I. talk for a Japanese soldier but rather as a racist/propagandist epithet used by American soldiers and brass during WWII. “Jap” was like a way to make the enemy into more of an object. I feel like “coolie” in the American labour context was probably the same thing, make these people into objects and get them to do shitty, inhumane work.

“jefe,
It is very possible that to older black Jamaicans, the term has a different meaning and usage than to succeeding generations of Indian Jamaicans.”

Linda says,

it’s possible…but I doubt it.. the word remains the same in Jamaica, past, present, and most likely future — it was used as a descriptive word for Indians.

The Indians in Jamaica have a similar history with the Chinese, but assimilation with black people was different.

What Abagond said about the subtext to it, it seems to be “they are no better than us” — that holds alot of truth because black African and Indian relationship in Jamaica started out rough:

Following the abolition of slavery in the1830s, after failed attempts to source much-needed labour through bountied European immigration, the Jamaican Government turned to India and China. Indian labourers who had already proved successful in Mauritius, were therefore considered to be a good bet for survival in Jamaica.

They (Indians) were, however, paid less than the ex-slaves and therefore originally lodged at the bottom of the society. Ironically, under the terms of their caste system, which valued light skin over dark, they in turn looked down on the ex-slaves.Relations between the two groups did not therefore begin on the best of footings.

The Indians added to the racial dynamics of Jamaica by amplifying the already existing racism/ colourism issues.

As I mentioned, the British already saw and called the Indians “n’ggers”, which was the highest form of insult for the Indians, so they made it a point to distinguish themselves from the black Jamaican “naygah” dem.

but now that I think about it, black Jamaicans back in the day, might have used the word “coolie” to remind the Indians of their original place in Jamaican society… that’s possible

when I was growing up, I never noticed if Indians got upset about being called a “coolie” but by then, the word might have taken on a different meaning with that generation of Indians… so Jefe, you might be on to something.

To me, I think the Indians were one the “rawest” immigrants in Jamaica.. in a good way. They had no filter, spoke their minds, and handled their business.

The older Indians were not up for being pushed around by anyone, but like with the Chinese– it was a love-hate relationship with black people in the beginning but they contributed A LOT to Jamaican culture.

” Indian contributions to Jamaican culture are legion. Indian jewellery designs have made their mark especially in the form of intricately wrought thin, gold bangles. The tradition goes back to the 1860s when plantation workers began to create these pieces and organized traveling salesmen to peddle them island-wide.

It was the Indians who first managed to grow rice in Jamaica, establishing the island’s first successful rice mill in the 1890s. They also dominated the island’s vegetable production until well into the 1940s. (curry, callaloo)

Old animosities forgotten, elements of traditional Indian dress can be found in Jonkonnu processions and many African-Jamaicans participate alongside their Indian-Jamaican brothers and sisters in the Indian inspired cultural celebrations of Hosay and Divali.

Hosay is a muslim festival that re-enacts a war between Mohammed’s sons, their death and burial. It lasts for 9 nights and on the tenth day the tazia (a paper and bamboo replica of a tomb) is taken to the streets in a large, colourful procession led by a Tasa drummer and followed by stick and horse dancers.”

The Indians introduced Ganja, dreadlocks and the Rastafarian religion — these things came from the Hindu religion

(and could also be a reason why older Jamaicans from my grandmothers time did not like Rastas and saw them as a bad influence on black Jamaican young men)

but Americans and the rest of the world falsely believes ganja, dreadlocks and Rasta’s represent the “Africa” in Jamaica because that is the narrative that got pushed with the introduction of Reggae to the world.

This is why many Indian Jamaicans complain that they have been marginalized in their own country and its history. Some complain that it is the mixed black Jamaican/Indians who are marketed to represent Jamaica and that full-blooded Indians get left out and pushed into the background because Jamaica is marketed as a “black” country.

I do believe Indian’s are marginalized in Jamaica because they blended in so well, that they are just considered a “different” kind of black

Abagond:
re: Chinese in Thailand…
Certainly there are Chinese in Thailand but to the best of my knowledge they were not brought in by any colonial power but migrated of their own accord. (As was the case with mainland Chinese to Taiwan before the mass migration due to the defeat of the Nationalists…) Thailand was never colonized.
And as I understand it, most of the Chinese immigrants were merchants not laborers.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Chinese

I am most familiar with the black Jamaican usage where it seems to just be neutral description. If there is any subtext to it, it seems to be “they are no better than us”, which is nothing like what the N-word means.

I’d like to answer your questions about this meaning and usage (impact, too) of this word in the Jamaican context, but at another time.
I share Jefe’s interpretation and my outlook on it is quite different from Linda’s. I’m trying to smooth out my thoughts before replying.

Being around Martincans and Guadeloupeans was probably the most eye-opening exposure to how these Asian workers were perceived in the Caribbean. At the time, I was a pretty young and didn’t even know that Indians were used there in the French islands!

But, soon enough I learned that it was not uncommon for the ex-slaves to despise the newcomers as beneath them: weak, unclean, culturally inferior, and — that some of these ideas had endured.
To what extent, I don’t know.

Later, I learned that some Indians (in Guadaloupe at least, I didn’t have the opportunity to find this out from Martinicans) would endeavour to hide their Asian origins, some doing so by “marrying out” into the black population to achieve this. Further, any discernible racial features of Asian-ness in their mixed-race offspring was not only a cause of racial shame, but racist scapegoating.

What I’ve read on the subject (particularly the work of David Dabydeen) doesn’t contradict this.

According to Suresh Kumar Pillai:The Indians in Guadeloupe like elsewhere in the Caribbean came to occupy the lowest strata in the society as the former African slaves had by then moved a notch up in improving their life conditions by entering into free occupations and establishing their farming villages. The Indians for their very survival had to compete with the ex-slaves, who resented the introduction of the Indians in the island as they felt the presence of the Indians undermined their bargaining power in the post-enslavement period. The Africans were by then gradually getting absorbed into the general colonial society through a process of Christianisation and modern education. Their improved social status made them see Indians as uncivilized and repulsive…

The lowest social position of the Indians and their continued practice of religious rituals and rites and social customs, which… made them the butt of social derision by the Europeans as well as the Africans. After adopting British cultural idioms, the African and mixed middle class deprecated the “backward coolie” culture of the Indians…

…The Hindu identity of the Indians was not tolerated by the French and the Africans. Many of the Hindu practices and customs were despised. The Indians having been assigned the lowest social position were ridiculed for their religious practices. The non-Indian communities treated the new immigrants with varying degrees of cruelty and cynicism…

It’d seem that the Africans learned to look down on the Indians by learning European ways. Yet:

… under the terms of their caste system, which valued light skin over dark, they in turn looked down on the ex-slaves.

I don’t doubt this…but from what India’s Hindu commentaros seem to say now, European scholars have been misreading Hindu religious teachings and incorrectly translating Hindu texts about skin colour that more conveniently fit their own racial paradigms. These became essential to British domination of Indian. Had this not being going on for centuries?

Unfortunately, there is a perception among many in the West that colorism (and even racism) is somehow a product of caste, and that the contemporary view of social stratification within India is somehow linked to skin color. More alarmingly, some scholars have even made ludicrous claims that social stratification by skin color is somehow inherent within Hinduism…

“I’d like to answer your questions about this meaning and usage (impact, too) of this word in the Jamaican context, but at another time.
I share Jefe’s interpretation and my outlook on it is quite different from Linda’s. I’m trying to smooth out my thoughts before replying.”

“Bulanik@ Meanwhile, Linda, if you have the time, I had a question here about the relationships that Asian Jamaicans have with black Jamaicans”

Bulanik, interesting question, I will get back to you on this soon–past week has been busy busy — World Cup is starting so time will be at a premium. I’ve been rearranging my work schedule to free me up for the games 🙂

…the word “n’gger” on the other hand, was used with hatred and it was also a descriptive word but it seems that the British used it indiscriminately because they called Indians “n’ggers” as well…

…As I mentioned, the British already saw and called the Indians “n’ggers”,

I haven’t been sure what to say about this, but here goes…I disagree.
A lot.

I think we know 2 completely different Jamaicas. 😛
Perhaps this is simply down to a regional difference.
Asians didn’t settle all over the island of Jamaica, so the black or other populations (who were, or are, less familiar with the Indians themselves) may have a different outlook on what Indians were, or are.

Naturtally, different populations retain different narrative histories.
Could this also be because of different assimilation patterns between Indians and Chinese indentured workes on the island?
You may be more familiar with the histories of the Chinese in Jamaica than I am (although that is also part of my heritage), but on the other hand, you may not be as familiar with the experiences of different Indian communities in the same way as the Chinese in Jamaica — I can’t say.
***

Since this post appeared, I have done some checking back with various relatives and, in their understanding and experience (going back a few generations, for the oldest ones), it is simply not so that Indians were not called “nay-gas”, or seen as such. No.
They were called “c00lies”.

Both words can be slurs.
The “neutral” term for a “coolie” is Indian.
The “neutral” term for a “nay-ga” is black person, or African.(I am not content using either word, but for the sake of clarity, I’ll type them in here.)
***

I do believe Indian’s are marginalized in Jamaica because they blended in so well, that they are just considered a “different” kind of black

Again, No.
Indians are NOT considered a “different” kind of black.
Not because they don’t know have brown or black skin-tones, but because they are Indians.

The categorisation you mention is only a manifestation of marginalisation.
This is what happens to minorities, isn’t it? They fall in line. They are silent.
-Especially ones who share a name — INDIAN — with Amerindians.
-Especially ones that are not considered real “Asians”, like the Chinese.
They are squeezed out. What I have heard is this: because Indians are overlooked for these reasons, they acquiesce in this way:
“we are also coloured people, we are brown too” because it’s futile to say anything. and if anything is said, then the majority will have something to say about it…

When I asked one of my relatives about this different-kind-of-black category, he gave off a cool silence and said: “You mean to say Jamaicans on a whole can’t tell the difference between Asiastics and Africans, now?
Oh — when since?”
***

And this: the British could also, absolutely, distinguished a person from African descent from a person of Asian descent.

An Indian, a South Asian person, was not simply considered a “different” kind of African person. From a common sense standpoint, the Indians not only looked different, they had different religions, spoke different languages, had different family setups, different clothing, they lived in separate quarters, they were new and separate, etc.

“Bulanik,
Since this post appeared, I have done some checking back with various relatives and, in their understanding and experience (going back a few generations, for the oldest ones), it is simply not so that Indians were not called “nay-gas”, or seen as such. No.
They were called “c00lies”.

Both words can be slurs.
The “neutral” term for a “coolie” is Indian.
The “neutral” term for a “nay-ga” is black person, or African.

Linda says,

Bulanik — I never said that Indians were called “Nay-gas” in Jamaica — being that the phrase is in Patois, I don’t know how you managed to misinterpret it… it’s a common phrase.

here is what I said: “funny enough, growing up, I’ve heard plenty older brown (mixed race) and Asian older people throw the phrase ” old naygah dem” around and other non-politically correct offensive words… I think the older Jamaican Indians would not have been offended by the word “coolie” but I believe currently and with this generation of Caribbean Indian’s, they find the word offensive”

I think you left Jamaica too early because it seems you are Not familiar with how the word “n’igger” is pronounced when are speaking patois — it comes out sounding like “Nay-hah”

This is how the word “n’gger” sounded like when the older people were cussing out the yard boy, or complaining about the youths or a loud party next door”

Nay-gah is not a neutral term for “black” or “African” — it’s how the older Indian people pronounced the word “n’gger”

Also, what I said was that back in the day, the white British/Jamaicans also called the Indians “n’ggers” as well. I’m sure you are aware that during British rule of India, the white British colonials would call Indians “coolies” and “n’ggers” because the word “n’gger” was in reference to their dark skin… the British did not use the word “n’gger” to mean “African” when referring to Indian people.

that is why I mentioned that Indian people are the first ones to say “I am NOT black” because to them, being called black is an insult

and the term “coolies” is a word that you will mostly hear black Jamaicans say when referring to Indians or mixed-people who look like Indians because black Jamaicans are very conscious of and acknowledge non-black ethnicity(s)

“Bulanik,
When I asked one of my relatives about this different-kind-of-black category, he gave off a cool silence and said: “You mean to say Jamaicans on a whole can’t tell the difference between Asiastics and Africans, now?
Oh — when since?”

Linda says,

Thank you for the lecture but it was unnecessary– you took my meaning too literal and out of context.

I never said that Jamaicans can not tell the difference between “African and Asians” — obviously Jamaicans can tell the difference and I’ve always emphasized that when discussing the Caribbean– I’ve always stated that there is a tri-racial classification: black, brown, and white…

Society has changed since then and people see themselves as “Jamaicans” first but it’s still a society run by Colourism –that’s why there is a skin bleaching problem

When I say that the Indians are thought of as a “different kind of black”– I am emphasizing the fact that Indians have blended in so well in Jamaican society, that they are are accepted by black Jamaicans as “brethrens”…and this acceptance as “one of us” ie Jamaicans may have resulted in their historical marginalization in the country.

This is my own personal thoughts on “why” Indians have been marginalized in Jamaican history… I was NOT trying to say black Jamaicans called Indians “black” and could not tell the difference between Aricans and Asian descended people… I was giving my opinion.

because obviously, black Jamaicans recognize that Indians are not racially black/Africans…. that’s why black Jamaicans emphasize this difference by calling anyone with Indian ancestry “coolies”– they are VERY aware of the difference… the word “brown” and “browning” exists because black Jamaicans are aware of the difference.

So, the real question is “why did the Indians in Jamaica feel the need to blend in so well?”… and you partially answered it in your statement:

“his is what happens to minorities, isn’t it? They fall in line. They are silent.They are squeezed out. What I have heard is this: because Indians are overlooked for these reasons, they acquiesce in this way:
“we are also coloured people, we are brown too” because it’s futile to say anything. and if anything is said, then the majority will have something to say about it”

I noticed one thing – one of the main target destinations of coolies was MALAYSIA, a place I have spent a significant amount of time in and go back to from time to time.

To think – the British could not get the local Malay and indigenous inhabitants to work in their plantations and mines, so they imported millions of Indians and Chinese. When the British let Malaysia become independent (while it still included Singapore), they left a country where the descendants of “non-indigenous” peoples exceeded the descendants of the ones that preceded the British. So we ended up having
– Singapore split off as a political compromise
– Continuous one-party rule in both Singapore and Malaysia for the past 50 years.
– a racial / religious apartheid system in Malaysia designed to keep the “races” separate (I don’t feel this as strongly in Singapore). In Malaysia, it is a matter of forcing Muslims to marry Muslims – they do not care as much re: what non-muslims do with each other.
– an affirmative action system that favours Malays and other bumiputera – giving them a sense of special privilege which looks a little similar to how British viewed themselves as endowed with special privilege in their colonies.
– an indigenous population in Malaysia still not interested in doing cheap labour – they copied the British model of importing cheap (sometimes indentured) labour from other countries to do their dirty work, creating new social problems.
– importation of new cheap labour into Singapore as well.

Sometimes I feel like it is still 1880 or 1900 there – there is still a legacy of British coolie colonialism operating there.

…I think you left Jamaica too early because it seems you are Not familiar with how the word

Wow, Linda: how did you get here so fast…?

I was not trying to “lecture” you. I did not speak out of disrespect, so I’m not sure how wagging the finger at me is warranted.

Since you don’t know how much time I’ve spent around Jamaicans — which is, incidentally, ALL my life — you can only speculate whether I left the island “too” early. You can only speculate about what I know of patwa: I might’ve been speaking it before you were born: who’s to know — we’re strangers.

I would NOT, and do not, speculate on your life: I would NOT do it personally, and would NOT begin to do it in a public forum like Abagond’s blog.
That would be an impudence.
Therefore, please — DO NOT extend yourself into what is my life and what is my familiarity, either. Thank you.

That said, apart from not knowing each other, there are added hurdles of which neither of us are to blame for:
1) communicating on a forum where more enlightening, but personal info, would be not-smart to disclose, and,
2) using the format of *writing*, rather than direct speech…
It’s far from ideal. I mean no malice, and malice is not, never was, the reason I visit this blog or comment.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
But, regarding the subject of our discussion:
Linda said:…I’ve never perceived the word to be on par with the word “n’gger” … but then, I am not ethnically Indian..

…in Trinidad, they do believe it is on par with the word N’gger”…

…the word “n’gger” on the other hand, was used with hatred and it was also a descriptive word but it seems that the British used it indiscriminately because they called Indians “n’ggers” as well…

To the general reader, the subtle distinction and the exact context between “n’gger” and “old naygah dem” — as used by Asian older people — was not obvious.
To many readers when they see or read “n’gger” and then see “old naygah dem”, it can be seen as having THE SAME connotation.
What was said and meant “back in the day” is not obvious, either.
This is especially so after you’ve showed (from the Gleaner article quoted) that the Indians already “.. looked down on the ex-slaves.”

So, in this light, the mistake can be made to read something too literal and out of context.
*

Linda said:This is how the word “n’gger” sounded like when the older people were cussing out the yard b0y, or complaining about the youths or a loud party next door”

…Nay-gah is not a neutral term for “black” or “African” — it’s how the older Indian people pronounced the word “n’gger”

Yes, and no.
The expression “di n-yeh-gah” was not only used to cuss.
I have heard it used as a racial descriptor, such as “‘ ‘im luv ahff di n-yeh-gah g-yal dem, so till”, in describing the affection an Indian man might hold for a black woman. There are other contexts, too.
Also, the older Asians pronunciation “ole n-YEH-gah dem” can also have have a general lightness. The “nasal” inflexion is often added to it — often heard in the speech habits of Jamaican Indians — the women especially — but more in country areas.
*

Linda said: Also, what I said was that back in the day, the white British/Jamaicans also called the Indians “n’ggers” as well. I’m sure you are aware that during British rule of India, the white British colonials would call Indians “coolies” and “n’ggers” because the word “n’gger” was in reference to their dark skin… the British did not use the word “n’gger” to mean “African” when referring to Indian people.

The British Raj is one thing, but was I’d question whether it was the custom of the plantocracy of the West Indies to call the Indian Asians “n’gger”.
A white overseer might — as a shorthand for dark skin.
But how common and practically useful would this practice be in a plantation structure that many Africans were part of — is hard to say. Because:

“On the plantations, the division of labor was along the racial lines. The whites occupied the supervisory positions. They were managers, overseers, engineers, housing officers,chemists, doctors, field clerk, driver and foreman . Sometimes some of the lower positions were given to coloured people and Africans who held clerical jobs such as accountant, bookkeeper, storekeeper, and typist.
Africans were also employed as punt, bailer, distillers, electrician, tractor operator, carpenter, and mechanic in the sugar factories.
The most labor-intensive jobs were reserved for Indian indentured laborers. The Indian who occupied the lowest of the low positions and had to perform jobs such as porter, cane cutters, shovel man, fork man, weeder, dock worker, boiler attendant, watchman, mill and punt had.
Wherever Indian laborers were rebellious the planters made it a point to appoint the most notorious persons of non- Indian origin to control them.”

why would I say that ‘the older brown or Asian people call themselves “n’ggers”? that don’t make no sense… I believe the way I used it was pretty clear

and I would expect that both you and Abagond would understand the phrase since you both are of Jamaican descent — since this discussion was amongst ourselves and not for the benefit of the general reader.

Jefe, who I was responding to also in part, would have/should have been the person to get confused by the my reference but instead, you were the person who seemed to falsely believe that I was saying that ‘Indians were called Nay-gah’s” — I was very surprised that you misconstrued what I said.

and further more, since you stated to me that “you and I must know 2 different Jamaica’s” and “but on the other hand, you may not be as familiar with the experiences of different Indian communities in the same way as the Chinese in Jamaica — I can’t say.”

how is my statement about you “leaving Jamaica early” any more different or insulting than your statement to me? then you proceeded to attribute meanings to my comments, which I did not say or imply

I don’t really mean to be rude either but as you pointed out, we don’t know each others lives … I may not be ethnically “Indian” but I grew up with and are related to Jamaican Indians all my life — and regardless of race/ethnicity, everyone speaks patois and are aware of the cultural nuances

FYI to general public: There are no hard and fast separate racial “communities” in Jamaica. Everyone lives next to everyone — and neighborhoods are essentially divided by class, not race or ethnicity

Bulanik, I certainly don’t know everything and if you point out something that I don’t know or something I did not mention, that’s one thing —

such as the fact the that in 1952, word “coolie” was legally banned from the law books in Jamaica; the East Indian Progressive Society (EIPS), founded by Dr. J. L. Varma in 1940, successfully lobbied for this:

“In Jamaica, the term ‘coolie’ was legally banned in the 1950s because it was used in a derogatory sense for an ethnic minority. This process began when the founder-President of the East India Progressive Society (EJPS), Dr. J. L. Varma, was popularly (but not abusively) referred to as ‘coolie doctor’. The EJPS then moved the government to ban the use of the term.”

“Bulanik @The British Raj is one thing, but was I’d question whether it was the custom of the plantocracy of the West Indies to call the Indian Asians “n’gger”.
A white overseer might — as a shorthand for dark skin.
But how common and practically useful would this practice be in a plantation structure that many Africans were part of — is hard to say.”

Linda says,

but you can’t isolate British thinking like that, they did not change their rules or mindset about race or their own white supremacy based on region.

The white overseer and the white plantation owner both believed they were superior to Africans, Indians, Chinese, aboriginal/natives- they carried this belief with them to every Continent they lived on and this mindset was passed on to the local whites, mixed-race “brown” people, and native people alike.

British/white Jamaican planter class were not isolated to the West Indies –many lived/spent a significant amount of time out of Jamaica – that’s why they would have their mixed-race children declared “legally white” so that these “absentee” British landowners could protect their interests in Jamaica while they were living back in Britain.

and remember, many white British soldiers, clerks, civil servants, and stewards served in different British colonial outposts:

“In the wake of their disastrous retreat from Kabul in 1842, the British meted out enough retributive homicide to earn the perpetual enmity of Afghanistan. Burma,Kenya and Iraq were subjugated with equal violence. After the Indian Mutiny, soldiers such as Garnet Wolseley did much to fulfill their vow to spill ‘barrels and barrels of the filth which flows in these n’iggers’ veins for every drop of (white) blood’ they had shed’.

Resistance evidently licensed disproportionate retaliation. When crushing opposition in Ceylon in 1818, the British killed over one per cent of the population. Thirty years later not a single European on the island perished in the only insurrection worthy of the name. But 200 alleged rebels were hanged or shot, and more were flogged or imprisoned. Governor Eyre’s reprisals after the Morant Bay uprising in Jamaica followed the same pattern.”

The British had been in India prior to the period known as the “British Raj”–
the British East India Company had been in India since the 1700s, so I’m sure the Indians who were indentured to Jamaica,(first arrived in 1845) would have already been familiar and subjected to white British racism

I am not saying that in Jamaica, Indians were called “n’ggers” — I am stating that they knew that the word was hateful and found it highly insulting because (1) it was used against Indians by the British in India and that (2) it was a word used to refer to black/African people

That’s why I said that in the beginning, “the Indians added to the racial dynamics of Jamaica by amplifying the already existing racism/ colourism issues.”

because the Indians who migrated to Jamaica did look down on the black Jamaicans based on their own prejudices, and they most definitely did not like being placed in the same low status boat as black/African people by the British.

but to be fair, the racial tension went both ways because the black Jamaicans had taken on the white British mindset when it came to the Asian migrants and were prejudiced against them as well,

and they probably did look down on the new arrivals and that’s why they also called them “coolies” –as a put down and to remind the Indians of their place on the totem pole as the new “slaves” (once again, my opinion)

I don’t get what you two are debating about – it seems like you both agree that they are people that find “coolie” to be a pejorative term with racist overtones, esp. to certain groups of Indian Jamaicans.

It seems your debate is more personal, not about the use of the word “coolie”.

I can’t think of any instance where “coolie” is not somewhat pejorative in one form or another esp. when used to address anyone. Only in its strictest use of Asian slave or Asian bonded indentured servant can I see it as a more neutral descriptive term, e.g., “Coolies were brought in to work on the plantation in the 19th century.”

I understand that.
This is EXACTLY what I mean when I say the “general reader” because I feel Linda was explaining a contradictory and complexity that lies at the identity of a minority group that is not fully understood by the overwhelming majority.

The use of language we’re discussing is the outgrowth of a specific, and nuanced social setup. That means not only that some code-switching is unavoidable: the contradictions it speaks to are tense and not at all obvious.
And, it is also not something that’s easy to talk about on this forum.

Hence what I said about trying to “smooth” out my thoughts to Abagond before answering.

I feel it would be a mistake to only perceive that Linda and my conversation is personal, not about the use of the word “coolie”.

Earlier, you hit the nail on the head when you said:

I think if you are on the receiving end of a racial epithet (which “coolie” is), it might be experienced differently from the “intention” of the original user.

This is absolutely the point.
I don’t feel this is actually “personal” as it appears. (The truth is that Linda has always been kind with me, and I am fan of her commentary.)
What I feel is happening is this tension you see is the contradiction at the centre of what it means to be a “coolie” in Jamaican society.

Generally:
*This low status is often brushed over to favour the outlook of the black majority towarads black slavery, and its legacies.
*That the Jamaican motto:”Out of many, One people” is a cliche that hides the fact that both for foreigners and the majority of Jamaicans — they consider the island a Black Nation. This has a pscychological impact…
*Also: that the degradation at the heart of the word “coolie” is of a lesser brand than the “n” word because the Indians: 1) suffered less, and 2) DESERVED to be put in their place because they arrived with ideas that were anti-black.

Among Indians the tension is felt like this:
a)Indians are part of the tapestry, but mustn’t be “too” Indian.
b)they constantly have to prove or justify how Jamaican they really are (they don’t “look” Jamaican, etc), and,
c)the Indian and “coolie” historical narratives are patchy and cliched in the mainstream.

The classic example is this one: a respected Jamiacan newspaper will broadcast this ghastly but TRUE belief from the “coolies” that arrived:

But, as the African cultures of the black Jamaicans have been appropriated, manipulated and degraded, it’s very rare for the same to be said about the Indians and theirs. In fact this particular attitude is seen as inherently Indian.
However, I have yet to see/hear mainstream Jamaica say that:
— European scholars misread Hindu religious teachings and incorrectly translated Hindu texts about skin colour that more conveniently fit their own racial paradigms, and did so for centuries before the Indians arrived in Jamaica.. or
–that this violence against Hinduism was as damaging to Indians as it was to the Africans they encountered.

I mentioned this earlier to Abagond, but I don’t know if it registered.

“FYI to general public: There are no hard and fast separate racial “communities” in Jamaica. Everyone lives next to everyone — and neighborhoods are essentially divided by class, not race or ethnicity.”

My answer:
Again, imo, yes, and no. I wouldn’t accept that the appearnace of everyone living next to each other explains what is going on fully.
The indentured Indians that came to the island in the 19th century settled in the estates / cane factories of St Mary, Portland, St. Thomas, Westmoreland and Clarendon parishes. Since those days that population spread out, true, but Indians are still to be found in concentrations of the traditional locales.

Everyone lives next door to everyone else and class is a factor — again, yes.
But of course, “communities” are not always the product of neighbourhoods or class. Even members of the same family can belong to a different class.
There ARE, though, informal communities of shared tradition, blood-ties, property, marital and business links that go back for generations, among Indians, that are not apparent or public to the rest of the population, and are STILL MAINTAINED. This has been described as clannish-ness in the past.

On a personal note — When I am with the Indian side of family (my grandfather had more than 18 children), the culture of it various branches of it are simply not the same as with the side of my grandmother’s family that is Sephardi, or the side of my mother’s family that areAfrican-descended, nor the side which is for example, or the side which Indo-Chinese, etc.
They don’t even use the same meanings for everything, so when you say: “everyone speaks patois and are aware of the cultural nuances”, I disagree.

Wow. I really opened a can of worms didn’t I? Glad to spark the discussion along.

Abagond I get what you’re saying about “historical context” but like I said, I don’t think you would do the same thing with the word “nigger.” Try reading “Huck Finn” or “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The word “nigger, in historical context, is thrown around as a word that is completely synonymous for “black person” particularly “black workers/ employees.” It’s not always used “with hatred” as defined by Linda. It’s mostly used to say “these people are black and therefore automatically less than white people, but hey there were there and we have to call them something.” It’s a word in those books that can be used to say “beasts of burden that seem almost human, but not really human because only whites are really human.”

It has always been my understanding that the word “coolie” is very offensive on the same level and for the same reason. Both of these words do exactly what they’re meant to do: Define, demean and worst of all dehumanize the specific groups of people they’re meant to denote – “lowly” workers who are not white.

I get that you think the word “coolie” can be benign in some instances. It’s just that it’s not. You know when someone uses that word, they’re not talking about white people.

We have to stop tying racism to “words” or “acts” and remember that racism at it’s core is about defining who is or isn’t white; and that it’s also about proving the inferiority and demanding the subservience of anyone who isn’t entitled to the privilege of being seen as a human being.

I said:“The British Raj is one thing, but was I’d question whether it was the custom of the plantocracy of the West Indies to call the Indian Asians “n’gger”.
A white overseer might — as a shorthand for dark skin.
But how common and practically useful would this practice be in a plantation structure that many Africans were part of — is hard to say.”

Linda said:

but you can’t isolate British thinking like that, they did not change their rules or mindset about race or their own white supremacy based on region.

True, they didnt, but I don’t believe I said they had.
The British were notorious for their practices throughout their empire. The word “n’gger” might have been used “generically” for any low status darker-skinned non-person. But wasn’t that also what a “coolie” was?

The British wanted not just the physical wealth of India and Indians, they also saw it as “the centerpiece of {their} imperialistic exploits. And many of the notable professors at the time had the audacity to consider themselves to be better authorities on their questionable translations of the Vedas then the Indian scholars. Western Indology itself, has its roots in European colonialism…”http://www.dw.de/the-west-has-a-lot-to-learn-from-ancient-india-indology-in-germany/a-6635426

My point — which I readily confess could have been explained and elaborated on to avoid readers’ possibly losing the thread of what I was saying (if I hadn’t been pushed for time to do so, as I admitted at the time), was that in a racially defined social strata,
whites on tops, blacks
mixed black-white people in the middle, and
Indians on the bottom layer — it would not spell sense, not be practical, to call an Indian “n’gger” when there were plenty of ex-African slaves present “as accountants, bookkeepers, storekeepers, typists…punts, bailers, distillers, electricians, tractor operators, carpenters, etc.
Especially if:
“…the planters made it a point to appoint the most notorious persons of non- Indian origin to control them”, which may not have been a white British colonial, but quite possibly an ex-slave.

To clarify, I am not confused or “too” anything.
I come out of an Indo-Caribbean heritage, a family of slaves and “coolies” and others — it’s been something that has headline many a discussion.
My experience is that the subject of “coolies” is complex, and has some quite uncomfortable contradictions to it.

Therefore, when I said this:
“I think we know 2 different Jamaicas 😀
Perhaps this is simply down to a regional difference.
Asians didn’t settle all over the island of Jamaica, so the black or other populations (who were, or are, less familiar with the Indians themselves) may have a different outlook on what Indians were, or are….”

It was far from being insulting: I even qualifed my remarks at the end by saying “I can’t say for sure”, because I said there are man questions and many unknowns.

I believe that’s inevitable. This is why you may noticed I frequently say
“I don’t know”,
“I haven’t read X” or whatever on this blog.
It’s why I ask so many questions and frequently ask for information.
I am not embarrassed by this, and I would hope other commenters don’t take this as invitation to embarrass me or “peg” me for doing so.

My intention had been to take a reasonable and open-minded stance.
I was clearly wrong to do so, and I am sorry I did.

“Bulanik,
There ARE, though, informal communities of shared tradition, blood-ties, property, marital and business links that go back for generations, among Indians, that are not apparent or public to the rest of the population, and are STILL MAINTAINED. This has been described as clannish-ness in the past.

They don’t even use the same meanings for everything, so when you say: “everyone speaks patois and are aware of the cultural nuances”, I disagree.”

Linda says,

True, most Jamaican minority groups stay in touch through those links but when it comes to nuances in patois or rather, “accents” while speaking patois, that is mostly dictated by region, not by ethnicity.

someone from Mavis Bank will accent their words slightly different from someone from Discovery Bay but speaking patois is what it is, the meaning of the words or phrases don’t change, if anything, new slang words get added by the younger generations.

so a word like “n’gger” in patois, sounds like Nay-gah, no matter who says the word–sounds the same coming from any Jamaican–black, brown, mixed-Chinese, mixed-Indian, Indian, Syrian, etc

We should be bringing forth information to share about the island, not critiquing each other– that is not what I set out to do.

You have your view and I have mine. I still retain my home in Jamaica, that’s why I live where I do, so I can travel back and forth in the Caribbean –I don’t really see where there is anything to debate with you about present day Jamaica.

I’ve witnessed the changes in the country in the last 40 years and today’s society is much different than what it was in the 1960s or 70s.

Even though most Asian minority groups felt pressured to conform in the beginning, many people of the generations born on the island assimilated “naturally” — it wasn’t forced. Those people who did not like the direction the island was taking, left — especially when Michael Manley took over.

but anyway, I also would like to discuss each Jamaican minority group and discuss their place/life in Jamaican society but I don’t want to lose sight that there is more Unity now than divisions –Jamaica is not like Guyana, where the racial tensions between Indians and black people were/are more palpable.

I think to discuss this topic, honesty is needed and must be accepted because as we have both said, marginalization of the Asian ethnic groups in history is real but any past historical conflicts that occurred, came from all sides.

Bulanik @ I understand that.
This is EXACTLY what I mean when I say the “general reader” because I feel Linda was explaining a contradictory and complexity that lies at the identity of a minority group that is not fully understood by the overwhelming majority.

Linda says,

Abagond asked me a question:

@ Linda @ Bulanik, etc
What do you think about what ThatDeborahGirl is saying?

My answer was directed to Abagond, not the general public/reader — that’s why I felt comfortable using a phrase in patois because I expect that Abagond would understand it, since he also understand patois and Jamaican culture.

@Bulanik – You can’t whine and bully people into accepting your point of view. That whole, “Well fine, I’ll take my ball and go home” approach to this type of conversation is childish and petty.

Saying you regret “trying to be open minded” means you never really came to the conversation in the spirit of learning in the first place. You really came to prove a point and when you couldn’t or someone, quite gently, didn’t agree with you then you want to pout and whine that those pesky black people just wouldn’t listen to YOU and all you were trying to do was relate. Right?

You say:
“We should be bringing forth information to share about the island, not critiquing each other– that is not what I set out to do….”
Thank you, I’m glad you see where I am coming when I made my original comment to you above.

“I think to discuss this topic, honesty is needed and must be accepted because as we have both said, marginalization of the Asian ethnic groups in history is real …”
We have different perspectives — a good thing — but seem to come together on the important issues. Being where I am, going home on a regular basis is trickier, so I take your point. It’s also right what you say about honesty being needed. Usually that’s not wanted and then called something it is not.

@ ThatDeborahGirl —Wow. I really opened a can of worms didn’t I? Glad to spark the discussion along

Don’t be too glad of yourself, will you.
Abagond, Linda, Jefe as well as others have been touching on the subject of “coolies” for years on this blog, so not sure why your’e now patting yourself on the back for “sparking” off The Discussion. This is just a continuation of it — Abagond made the invitation for it in 2012.
You obviously haven’t been paying attention.

Thanks too, for telling me particularly about black anger and how white people behave. I’d never have known about either if it weren’t for your pointers.

May I make a suggestion to you, in turn: when you decide to scolding black, “coolie” commenters about black anger and black people, gentleness and the spirit of learning — check your own example.

I noticed one thing – one of the main target destinations of coolies was MALAYSIA, a place I have spent a significant amount of time in and go back to from time to time.

To think – the British could not get the local Malay and indigenous inhabitants to work in their plantations and mines, so they imported millions of Indians and Chinese. When the British let Malaysia become independent (while it still included Singapore), they left a country where the descendants of “non-indigenous” peoples exceeded the descendants of the ones that preceded the British. So we ended up having
– Singapore split off as a political compromise
– Continuous one-party rule in both Singapore and Malaysia for the past 50 years.
– a racial / religious apartheid system in Malaysia designed to keep the “races” separate (I don’t feel this as strongly in Singapore). In Malaysia, it is a matter of forcing Muslims to marry Muslims – they do not care as much re: what non-muslims do with each other.
– an affirmative action system that favours Malays and other bumiputera – giving them a sense of special privilege which looks a little similar to how British viewed themselves as endowed with special privilege in their colonies.
– an indigenous population in Malaysia still not interested in doing cheap labour – they copied the British model of importing cheap (sometimes indentured) labour from other countries to do their dirty work, creating new social problems.
– importation of new cheap labour into Singapore as well.

Sometimes I feel like it is still 1880 or 1900 there – there is still a legacy of British coolie colonialism operating there.

When I’ve ever heard Malaysians talking about this subject, somehow it never occurred to me that the newly imported indentured labour was a copy of the old British practices. The impression was that they were “migrant workers” instead.
What problems have their importation caused?

Also, the policy that favoured the Malays/bumiputera wasn’t expressed as affirmative action (at the time), but now that you explain it — it was. It seems as if the thinking behind that was “How else could the “too-successful” descendants of the Chinese and Indentured workers be hemmed in”?
That’s how it was portrayed.
Has this really become like another form of British privilege as time has gone on?

It has always been my understanding that the word “coolie” is very offensive on the same level and for the same reason. Both of these words do exactly what they’re meant to do: Define, demean and worst of all dehumanize the specific groups of people they’re meant to denote – “lowly” workers who are not white.

I get that you think the word “coolie” can be benign in some instances. It’s just that it’s not. You know when someone uses that word, they’re not talking about white people.

We have to stop tying racism to “words” or “acts” and remember that racism at it’s core is about defining who is or isn’t white; and that it’s also about proving the inferiority and demanding the subservience of anyone who isn’t entitled to the privilege of being seen as a human being.

The reason why I mentioned it was the importation of cheap indentured labour from Asian countries (ie, “coolies”) was so rife in Malaysia, but not so much in the other Asian countries. Maybe it had something to do with it being a British colony, and the British either try to force local indigenous inhabitants into cheap or free labour, or they import them.

Malaysia has imported some 3-4 million people from foreign countries in the past 25 years as cheap labour. What other country has done that? Malaysia has a young demographic population (average age about 23, slightly higher than the Philippines, but lower than India or Indonesia), yet none of those other countries do mass importation of labour to work in their factories, their health and hygiene services, their private security systems, etc. Why does Malaysia have such a high demand for cheap foreign labour? I have seen some demand in Thailand and Taiwan, but nowhere near as high as in Malaysia.

Their demand, together with some lax rules about entering the country, has fueled an illegal human trafficking trade.

it is a problem as people are people. Eventually, they want to do things other than just work. They want to get married, form families, educate their children, practice their religion, participate in civic life, etc. — stuff that the Malays do not want them to do, unless they can buy their vote (which they do to some of the migrants, esp. Muslims from neighboring countries – this might appeal even more to those from Thailand and Philippines where muslims are minorities). At one point, you can’t keep people as pure migrant workers with no mobility unless you start to release the hold on their civil rights. There is now a generation of children of migrant workers born in Malaysia with no civil status.

I noticed that Malaysia DOES NOT import labour from India or China (the source of the prior century’s indentured labour), but Singapore does. Very interesting. And Singapore does allow them to eventually become permanent residents.

The Bumiputera preference system is DEFINITELY and Affirmative Action program designed to advance Malay power, money and influence. It has become so ingrained in people’s mentality that the current generation thinks it is just “normal”. For example, most employers are required to provide free company paid prayer time to Muslims. I visited a factory in April that was about 40% Muslim. When I suggested that granting company-paid prayer time and a prayer room to Muslims, but not to other religious followers was a form religious discrimination, they got all huffy with me and said that it was their practice and culture to do so (as thought I did not understand). Of course I understood what they are doing.

A factory I visited recently in Indonesia had a mosque on the premises and granted free prayer time, but they also allowed anyone else to use that time for religious or private purposes also. That seemed less discriminatory to me, and they are over 80% musliim.

i understand that not all Malays follow the majority party and some of the muslim naturalized migrants do not necesarily agree with them all the time either. I feel the society there is a powder keg wating to explode.

@Bulanik – it’s always nice to be part of the convo and watch it grown from something one said, especially when I had forgotten about it for a while and came back and was like, woah 😉

As for the the other, you’re right, I did misread your comment, so sorry. But I think you should never regret being open-minded. It is what it is. There will always be room for misunderstandings, especially in forums like this. Shit happens. Don’t ever take your ball and go home. Play dodgeball with it and smack someone in the head. That’s he we learn 🙂

So Abagond, are you going to change how you use the word “coolie” from now on? Take for example this sentence from another post on ” How did White America become so rich?”

” Labour: at cut rates from people of colour: slaves, coolies, migrant workers, Mexican nannies and landscapers, etc. Blacks are still markedly underpaid even when you take education into account.”

Instead of the word “slaves” would you use the word “niggers” because that’s technically the “historical context? Of course not. I am of the (sole?) opinion that using coolie in this fashion is mildly to outright offensive and should be avoided.

According to my Jamaican mother, a woman in in her late 40s, coolie is a slur. She said it means slave (from what iv’e read ‘worker’ or ‘labourer’ is a more appropriate definition).

According to my Jamaican friend of mixed African, Indian, & Asian ancestry, who is in his early 20s, coolie is just a descriptive word used for people with a certain “mixed look” (brown ppl). He never explicitly said it was offensive; however, he often gets offended when ppl hint at his non-blackness in general. So i’d have to ask him.

I owned a pair of shoes made of cloth that look like Mary Janes but they were described in the catalogue as “coolie shoes” This is a pejorative word i wonder why they continue to use that word. Just like the word “squaw” “squaw boots” maybe retailers need to check and learn about the use of certain words that they give their merchandise.

Where were they from? Did people from different regions (and speaking different languages / dialects) go to different places?

To what extent do their descendants maintain any ties to the home region?

Yes, granted, the ones from China did come mostly from Guangdong and Fujian (smaller amounts from Guangxi or Hainan). But even within those regions, there was a variation in the concentration of the origin in each destination. For example, something like 60% of the Chinese (until the mid-80s) in the USA came from one single county in Guangdong and 90% from the same general region west of the Pearl River. If you go to that one county, it seems that almost every single family has relatives in the USA or Canada.

If you look at Venezuela, something like 60-70% came from a different county (but in that same region). Maybe 80-90% of the ones in Jamaica were Hakka in 3 counties east of the Pearl River.

In Malaysia, the ones who worked on the Tin mines near Ipoh might have come from a different region than the ones on Rubber plantations in the north or south of the country. Something like 90% of the ones in the Philippines came from one of 3 counties in SW Fujian province, and the vast majority of the ones in Thailand came from 1 of 3 counties in eastern Guangdong.

Where were the Indian indentured labourers from?
The answer is not simple, but generally if they were headed for the English-speaking world — North India, many (at the beginning) being shipped from Calcutta.

Most are descendents of populations around the Indo-Gangetic Plain, roughly south-central Asia which covers East and North India, parts of south Nepal, practically all of Bangladesh and the western bits of Pakistan.
If you were to look at in terms of cities in India, then Jaipur Hyderabad, Multan, Islamabad, Lucknow, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Varansi Lahore, Amritsar, Bathinda, Karachi, Jammu, Jalandhar, Pathankot, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, Kanpur, Allahabad, Patna, Kolkata, Guwahati and Dhaka would be included. The Indo-Gangetic Plain:

A minority of the indentured came from South India, being Telugu and Tamil speakers, indicating Tamil-Nadu and Anddhra Pradesh.
They were concentrated more in the French-speaking territories, such as Mauritius, Reunion or Martinique, but were present, in smaller numbers elsewhere. It seemed each place

So, did the labour imports from India to certain places tend to share similar social origin, culture and language in a manner similar to the ones from China?

Did we have a situation, such as 90% to Mauritius (or Guyana, or Trinidad or Jamaica or South Africa or whatever) come from the same region?

I noticed that both Penang and KL in Malaysia had many direct daily flights to Chennai (still called “Madras” in the early 90s) and the most common Indian language in Malaysia is Tamil. How does that compare to the other countries? If I go to Chennai, will I see a large impact of the people who returned or visit from Malaysia?

The Philippines has direct flights to Xiamen on a few different carriers, as that is where most Filipino Chinese trace their origin.

In the USA, I have noticed the “replacement” of different dialects as the lingua franca as the immigration laws changed.

Finally, I am curious on how the labour migrants affected the original hometowns. Kaiping county in Guangdong province was designated a UNESCO world heritage site because of the large number of “Diao Lou” watch towers built by overseas returning Chinese in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kaiping, along with its neighboring country Taishan, provided over 90% of the coolie labour to US and Canada. These two counties accounted for the origin of the majority of Chinese Americans until the late 1980s.

From what I’ve gathered from studies about it (Dabydeen, Pillai, Torabully and others), there seem to be 2 forms. Either 80% or so of North, or Northeast Indians with an admixture 20% or so from the South of the country. That would be true of Guyana.

Interesting what you say about Malaysian Indians — I thought they were descendents of South Indians, too, not only from appearance, but cooking.
I believe the descendents of those labourers in English-speaking Caribbean are mostly North and Northeastern Hindus.

I’ll see if there is some reference to it in Torabully’s theory on “coolitude”: I recall that mentioned something about it at some stage.

Finally, I am curious on how the labour migrants affected the original hometowns. Kaiping county in Guangdong province was designated a UNESCO world heritage site because of the large number of “Diao Lou” watch towers built by overseas returning Chinese in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kaiping, along with its neighboring country Taishan, provided over 90% of the coolie labour to US and Canada. These two counties accounted for the origin of the majority of Chinese Americans until the late 1980s.

And yes, how did loss of population affect the people at home.
After all, many had not come into servitude voluntarily. There are some narratives about this — nothing near as full as Olaudah Equiano’s memoirs (lol), but they do exist.

In the USA, I have noticed the “replacement” of different dialects as the lingua franca as the immigration laws changed.

Interesting all this wealth of information brought here by Jefe, Bulanik and others about all this “wander” of humans (specially Asians) on Earth in the last couple of centuries.
Some of these people came to our shores in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). And some remained there too…
A book that I bought many years ago have some details about their odysseys. There is an online version that you can check in http://www.questia.com/ under the title
“Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825” (author C. R. Boxer)
A few things about Indians in Mozambique:
* people known as Indians in Mozambique have their ancestors in the Indian sub-continent; some are really from Indian descent, and others are from Pakistani descent;
* the Indians in Mozambique either are Hindus, Muslims or Christian (Catholic);
* the catholic Indians, also known as “goeses” came fleeing (?) from (under Portuguese colonial administration) Goa, Damao and Diu after these territories fall to Indian control;
* the “goeses” have within their ranks some Portuguese admixture, and not few identified themselves strongly with the Portuguese; some of my childhood friends belong to this group and tended to show some disdain vis-a-vis other Indians (“look, how can they go to the beach with the women in full dress? they are backward”);
* the Indians from Hindu or Muslim extraction tend to show a very strong entrepreneurial spirit; the “goeses” are more dedicated to liberal professions (doctors, lawyers, etc);
* some notable individuals from Indian descent related to Mozambique:
– Abdul Magid Osman (Muslim extraction); senior member of the ruling party since Independence (1975); was Finance Minister for some years; etc.
– Prakash Ratilal (Hindu extraction); also senior member of the ruling party since Independence; was Governor of the Bank of Mozambique for some years; etc.
– Aquino de Bragança (Catholic extraction, “goes”); was one of the leading ideologues of the ruling party; founder of the Center for African Studies in the older and larger university in Mozambique; died in the Mbuzini plane crash that killed also the first Mozambican President Samora Machel; see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambican_Tupolev_Tu-134_air_disaster);
– Momade Bachir Sulemane (Muslim extraction); wealthy entrepreneur, owner of the MBS Group and the Maputo Shopping Center, the largest mall in the capital city of Maputo and the whole country; see (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZlTje0uuFU);
– António Costa (Catholic extraction); this one is, in fact, a Portuguese politician, senior member of the Socialist Party there, and Mayor of the city of Lisbon; is father was born in Mozambique from a “goes” family.

So, did the labour imports from India to certain places tend to share similar social origin, culture and language in a manner similar to the ones from China?

This is quite a question. I am pressed for time again, but hope to return to this and try my best to give you some more replies when I can, even though it will sound rushed (!). There’s a lot to say on the subject.

Munu aka Bantu makes mention of the “wander” of humans (specially Asians) on Earth in the last couple of centuries. I think this meaning of “wander” may indeed be true of a place such Mozambique, a country in Africa with a long history of trade with India. Therefore:
“migration-to” and “travelling-to” carries connotations of agency and pro-activeness. This is quite a separate event and form of separation from Asia than the trade in “coolies”, and in fairness to Munu aka Bantu, I believe that distinction is implicit.

This is distinction is essential to draw.
From the accounts of his form of labour shows, “coolies”, much of the time, neither “fled” nor came with:
1. full consent, nor,
2. full knowledge of the “agreement” they had entered into.
They were often freighted under duress and through deception.
They were freighted as no more than human cargo.
Many could not be accurately described as emigrants.
And in the cases we are speaking of, the trade in Asian “coolies” simply replaced the trade in Africans. One violent and dehumanising practice was replaced by one very similar to it.

The case of Macao, apparently, reads something like this:

From 1847 to 1875, between 250,000 and 500,000 Chinese coolies were sent from Macao to Latin America and the Caribbean aboard the vessels of Western nations.

Most never returned to their motherland, dying unmarried, poor and alone in a foreign land.

Macao was the centre of this trade: peasants from Guangdong and other provinces were tricked or forced to the Portuguese enclave, from where the ships carried them across the Pacific to virtual slavery in plantations and the booming sugar, guano and mining industries.

It is one of the darkest pages in the history of Macao. It was finally closed by international outrage over the treatment of the coolies and by the protests of the Chinese Government, forcing the colonial authorities to shut down this trade in human cargo.

…Conditions on the ships crossing the Pacific were terrible; many died of disease, shortage of food, beatings or suicide. The coolies were kept in holds below the deck, with no sunlight, and so tightly packed that they could not lie down. The journey to Peru took 120 days and to Cuba 168 days. One ship with 600 coolies arrived at its destination with only 100 alive. The conditions were comparable to those on the ships that took African slaves to the Americas…

…On arrival, they were treated like slaves: driven to markets by drivers armed with whips, and stripped naked, so that buyers could decide how fit they were. Then they were sold at auctions to the highest bidder. The purchaser was able to keep them for the seven-eight years of the contract. After that, they were in theory able to choose their employer, but in fact were often forced to work for several more years. During their employment, they were often chained, flogged and kept in detention, to prevent them from escaping…”

It is well know the “coolie” women, particularly the ones from India, were vastly outnumbered by the men and the subject not only of violence below deck, but also “the attentions” of the European crew.
And, like the Africans before them, the “coolies” as a whole, were condemned to eat, sleep and sit among their own excrement. Those that did not survive would simply be thrown overboard.

@ Bulanik
“Therefore:
“migration-to” and “travelling-to” carries connotations of agency and pro-activeness. This is quite a separate event and form of separation from Asia than the trade in “coolies”, and in fairness to Munu aka Bantu, I believe that distinction is implicit.”

Yes, it is.

My main motive was to draw attention to movements of people from Asia to East Africa or Africa in general, particularly, to regions that were formerly Portuguese colonies, because in the discussions in this blog often the “World” is implicitly assumed to be, in fact, only the “Anglo World”, letting outside the stories and narratives of a not small part of humanity.
But I agree that the narratives I drew your attentions to, spoke more about free migration than of forced migration.

@ Bulanik

“Conditions on the ships crossing the Pacific were terrible; many died of disease, shortage of food, beatings or suicide. The coolies were kept in holds below the deck, with no sunlight, and so tightly packed that they could not lie down”

and

“During their employment, they were often chained, flogged and kept in detention, to prevent them from escaping…”

Incredible.
So the European powers who, before that time, made transactions of Africans as slaves, after the forced end of this inhuman commerce, switched to the transactions of Asians as “coolies”, i.e., almost like slaves except in the supposed duration of their programmed ordeal in distant lands.
The evil spirit behind this European behavior had not changed, only the humans it forced to suffer.

An author (whose name I don ‘t remember) has said, regarding this inhuman behavior of Europeans vis-a-vis people of other continents, at that time, that, “the Europeans, had learned to treat inhumanly large portions of humanity for so long that this vice, at some point in time, came to Europe itself, in the form of Nazism, i.e., a display of barbaric behavior of Europeans towards other Europeans”.

Today, at least, Europeans and their descendants worldwide, try to put a break to racism and other forms of inhumanity of man to man.

This is not really saying too much – sorta like saying the Chinese coolies were of Han ethnicity. Do we know what language and cultural background they had and which ones went where, which ones went back, or elsewhere, etc.

Malaysian Indians

Tamil is one of the official languages of Singapore, when they mention teaching ethnic Indians native tongue, they mean Tamil and when I was in Penang, I noticed that most of the Indians who could speak any Indian language also spoke Tamil. Few were fluent in Hindi, although there was some access to Hindi television or films. There were very few speakers of other Indian languages.

Singapore and KL have direct flights to multiple Indian cities, but Penang only flies to Chennai (Madras).

I know approximately the distribution of Chinese dialects in Singapore and Malaysia, and it varies from place to place. Some towns, for example, are almost entirely Hakka; some are Hokkien (Minnan dialect) and some are Cantonese.

I believe the descendents of those labourers in English-speaking Caribbean are mostly North and Northeastern Hindus.

That is extremely vague. I can tell you, for example, that 90% of pre-1965 Chinese in America and the majority until at least the 1980s came from 1 of 2 counties in the Sze Yap (4 district) region of Guangdong west of the West River tributary of the Pearl River, about 60% from Taishan (formerly called Sunning, or Xinning) and 30% from Kaiping (were most of the Diaolou watchtowers are located). A county in China can be likened to a county in the USA.

I can also tell you that over 80% of the Chinese in Jamaica were Hakka speakers coming from one of 3 counties on the eastern side of the Pearl River.

When over 300,000 Chinese went to the USA, maybe 300,000 of them were from one of those 2 counties. Another 100,000 went to Canada, a couple tens of thousands went to Australia and over 100,000 went to Peru, and over 10,000 to Cuba. Some also went to Malaysia and Vietnam. As you can imagine, some villages were completely cleaned out of their young men. The practice was to make the male marry and make his wife pregnant before leaving, so that he would have an obligation “back home”, plan on returning, etc. Some returned briefly only to make his wife pregnant again, or if she was too old, marry a younger one and make her pregnant. But it ended up leaving a multi-generational legacy of boys not growing up with their fathers, and men bringing over his son later, or in rare cases, send his overseas born son back to China for education.

Almost everybody there has relatives in US and Canada.

Of course they influenced the place they left. The native rural Cantonese dialects in Southern China have absorbed a lot of foreign (i.e, English) words into the local dialect. The overseas Chinese, particularly the ones in the USA, were a large source of funding for the overthrow of the Ching (Qing) dynasty. and some returnees brought a bit of home back with them.

Have you heard of Chin Gee Hee? He came to Washington State as a young man in the 1860s, settling in Seattle in the 1870s. He went back and forth between China and the USA 1900s-1920s, but left his business in the hands of his sons in Seattle. He built the first railway in Southern China. There is a statue of him in the hometown and the historical marker describes his life in the USA. I saw it.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chin_Gee_Hee

Also, people in the USA stereotype Asians, particularly ethnic Chinese as volleyball players, but the game was invented in Massachusetts in 1895. It was brought back to China in the early 20th century to Taishan county, which historically has been the volleyball champion of the entire country and which sources the largest portion of the national players.

There are more descendants of these 2 counties in the USA and Canada than live today in those 2 counties today. So you can imagine the close ties between there and the USA. Nowadays, I found many of them are going to Brazil. When I was in Sao Paulo and Paraty and Curitiba, I heard the same dialect that is spoken in that county, and found out that they come from those counties, together with a few neighboring ones with slightly different dialect. Then, when I went back to that county in China, I saw adverts all over the place to help people immigrate to Brazil (in addition to the USA). It is so interesting to go to both places and talk to people and find out what is going on.

If you go to other counties or towns in southern China, you will find that some have very close ties to some overseas place.

I was wondering if the native origin of Indian coolies to a particular destination can be nailed even down to specific towns and counties and rural districts which speak the same local dialect, and if you can see the influence of the destinations on the original places. We are talking about over 40 million people from Asia brought around the world; there must have been impact in both places, since some of them went back.

I can also tell you that most of the Filipinos who went to Hawaii before WWII were Ilocano – not necessarily the same as ones who went to Mainland USA.

Finally, I was wondering if there was simultaneously events happening in India which suddenly made millions of men available to leave.

In China, 3 events were causing turmoil in the mid 19th century
– the First Opium war
– the Taiping Rebellion (which was essentially a Civil War led by Hakka Chinese)
– the Punti – Hakka clan wars in Guangdong province.

Also, as China relegated the European powers to the coast, the men left from ports along the coast. I wonder if the same thing happened in India – if they were funneled and marketed from port towns specializing in the coolie trade.

There is an expression that is still used in Cantonese ( 賣豬仔) pronounced “maai jyu zai” in Cantonese (Mai4 zhu1 zai3 in Mandarin or Maai Gee Doi in the rural Taishan dialect) that can be translated literally as “selling piglets”. The meaning is to sell young men into indentured servitude. There is a long history from the mid 19th to early 20th century of doing this, and they had a special name for this practice. Evidently many of them got rich doing that.

I am sure that the middlemen on both the China side and the USA side worked together to ensure a steady supply of cheap Chinese labour.

I wonder if Indian indentured labour operated the same way, and if the practice developed in the 19th century might have served as a model for the modern day bonded indentured and other forced labour in India today.

This is distinction is essential to draw.
From the accounts of his form of labour shows, “coolies”, much of the time, neither “fled” nor came with:
1. full consent, nor,
2. full knowledge of the “agreement” they had entered into.
They were often freighted under duress and through deception.
They were freighted as no more than human cargo.
Many could not be accurately described as emigrants.
And in the cases we are speaking of, the trade in Asian “coolies” simply replaced the trade in Africans. One violent and dehumanising practice was replaced by one very similar to it.

Yes, I believe this to be true. In many, if not most respects, the transpacific slave trade was as dehumanizing transatlantic slave trade. I suspect that Peru and Cuba were worse, but many of those coolie slave ships went to the USA. After banning importation of African slaves, they simply went to Asia and did the same thing.

You can bet your life that none of it is covered in the US history textbooks.

Macau – that is closest to the west side of the Pearl River, where most of the original Chinese to USA, Canada, Peru and Cuba went. To think that in the 19th century, it was one of the main centres of the Coolie trade. I try to imagine what it would be like to have hundreds of young men pouring into there every day. But as I mentioned, they were fleeing war themselves.

We have a post on Coolies. It would be nice to have one also on the Coolie trade or Transpacific Slave Trade.

Have you noticed that tracing the precise origins of some, or many, of the Indian “coolies” is not the same as what is traceable for the Chinese ones?
If you have, do you have a theory why that is?

The towns and villages of India that were the original homes of many of the Indo-Caribbean “coolies” is rarely discussed in India, for instance.
In Kolkata/Calcutta, it’s not even definite where the depot used to process the labourers used to be. By and large, the Indians of that region don’t know anything about this part of India’s history or about the Indians that departed from there.*

One theory for this is a sense of lost honour: “because the “brain drain” of doctors and engineers has always been the migration story India wanted to highlight rather than the “coolie” migration.”
Another reason might concern the colonialists’ treatment and general perception of the Indian women sent on the ships, a perception that lingers to this day unchanged.

I am not sure that article really explains what is going on. If most of the Indians in Penang, Malaysia can still speak Tamil, and there are several daily flights between Penang and Chennai, obviously there has been some retention of ties between the two places and the history of the Indian diaspora to Malaysia and Singapore has not been 100% lost. Likewise, I have met 5th & 6th generation Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore who are descendant of the 19th century coolies, but have lost ties to the home village or community. Some have retained it though.

There are reasons why, say, Guyanian Indians who left India from Kolkata did not retain ties there, but I doubt that it is purely due to the loss of honour. I can perhaps speculate, but the explanation is probably complicated.

On top of that, Abagond said

Most Indians returned home. Not as many Chinese did.

If that is the case, the returnee Indians must have left a mark BACK in India after they returned. Should be even more than the Chinese since fewer of them returned.

For one thing, by the 1820s, South Asia had been colonized by Britain. It would have been easier to snatch up young Indians here and there and ship them overseas. Maybe that is why many women went also. And India has more population near the coast, making it easier to bring people there to ship them off somewhere. Maybe it does depend where they left from. Maybe the ones on the East Coast went to SE Asia and the ones on the west coast went to Africa and the Americas, for example.

This could also explain part of the difference in the reasons why Indians became available vs. Chinese who became available, the gender imbalances, etc.

Britain did not get HK until 1841 (and only HK Island and Kowloon – the New Territories were not leased until 1898). Even then, its population was small and could not supply millions of coolies to ship abroad. There were foreign settlements in Guangzhou, which might have assisted.
Of course, as you mentioned, there was Macau, which would have been an easy departure point for the ones on the West side of the pearl River.
Swatow (Shantou) and Amoy (Xiamen) were port cities further east which provided many of the coolies for SE Asia. But I think the shipments to the Americas, the Indian Ocean, Australia and Africa probably came from either side of the Pearl River in Guangdong.

So, Chinese coolies had to LEAVE China and get to HK or Macau somehow to get on the foreign ships.

So we have a combination of successive wars in southern China
– First Opium War
– Taiping Rebellion
– Punti – Hakka Clan Wars
– Second Opium War

that caused millions to flee their villages. There were middlemen waiting for them to put them on the ships overseas.

But as Britain had colonized India, a war was not needed to make coolies available (from Burma, Ceylon, India / Pakistan / Bangladesh, maybe also Nepal). They only needed to source them or just “transfer them” overseas.

Something else – I think in the beginning they just sent young men from China out, but as many did not come back, they forced the young men to marry and make their wife pregnant before they left, creating an obligation back home and a reason to maintain contact for up to several decades.

OMG,
I just saw this video which is part of the same series to the video whose link I posted under “Chinese Exclusion Act” (What was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882?)

“What is a Coolie”
(http://youtu.be/xyFvwTWtdQo)
None of the students interviewed at Penn State Univ. in the video (Black, white, latino, otherwise), including all of the Asian-Americans and foreign Asian students had any clue what it meant.

Gee Whiz,

To me it is like not knowing the answer to the question “What is a Slave?”

Considering how global it was and the numbers involved (in the tens of millions – outnumbering the African slave trade manifold), this is astounding.

If this guy (the producer of the video) did it as part of his Asian American Studies course, I think it was a clever idea. He also asked “What is the difference between Asian Studies and Asian American Studies?”. Again, none of the students could answer that question exactly (although some “kinda” touched on it, but no one really got it). He also asked if he thought that there would be interest in Asian American studies courses at the university, and most said YES, but then gave reasons that had little to do with the actual content of such a course (eg, the rising political and economic importance of China, etc.).

The most appalling answers were from the Asian-American students who were obviously more whitewashed.

One student (whom I guess might be Indian American) said NO, and gave a better reason for that than the people who said yes.

Personally, I feel that the answer might be NO. Most people would feel that it has nothing to do with them, even though it has touched the lives of all Americans and has played an integral role in the formation of race relations and immigration policy in the USA. Or they think that it might have something to do with modern US – Asia relations, which has nothing to do with them.

But, I do esp. wonder about the whitewashed Asian-Americans at university today. If Asian-American history is not taught to them in high school, by their parents, or if they never researched it on their own, what history, exactly, do they identify with? If they are clueless about both Asian history and Asian-american history, what do they identify with? White American history?

It doesn’t surprise me, Jefe. My own experience has been either that people don’t know what it is, or, if they do, they know a version of “coolie” that is completely unfamiliar to what my own family know of what a “coolie” was or is.
It causes a lot of ambivalence.

– affected scores, if not hundreds of countries, including nearly all the countries in the Americas,
– involved nearly 60 million people at its peak, and tens of millions since then,
– Tens of millions of Asians are trafficked still today
– was a system implemented primarily to replace or supplement African slaves
– Maybe over 200 million people today are descendants of coolies

do you feel that something is wrong? That people do not even know about it or what the word means?

I was not taught it in school , I’m not surprised either, but I feel something is wrong.

Yes, something is not as it should be.
I haven’t answered your questions because I am not sure yet, how to say what I want to say.

“Coolies” is a subject I’ve mulled over for many years — naturally, there are many, many strands and no monolithic narrative — but even telling what I know of my very tiny corner of those narratives is something I approach with caution.

Many, many don’t know what the word means, and for some who do know what it means, they remain largely unaware of the magnitude of the trade, as well as what the “coolie”stories were or what it means to their descendants…
Even as I tried to begin the conversation about it here, and begin to try and express what I know of that side of MY OWN ancestry, it seemed to be too-quickly misunderstood, or relegated too readily as a side-note in the greater narrative of nationhood.

The Indentured slave servant needs more space, though, so personally, I think it’s only sensible to keep at it. I’ll make some time to gather up a few thoughts and post something soon.

True, most Jamaican minority groups stay in touch through those links but when it comes to nuances in patois or rather, “accents” while speaking patois, that is mostly dictated by region, not by ethnicity

….so a word like “n’gger” in patois, sounds like Nay-gah, no matter who says the word–sounds the same coming from any Jamaican–black, brown, mixed-Chinese, mixed-Indian, Indian, Syrian, etc…

….You have your view and I have mine. I still retain my home in Jamaica, that’s why I live where I do, so I can travel back and forth in the Caribbean –I don’t really see where there is anything to debate with you about present day Jamaica

I was trying to bring focus to a point, and points of difference, that could, and are, easily be missed by the non-Indian population.

The nasal tonal quality of Indian voices, is, in fact, typical.
It is part of the “musicality” that can sometimes be heard in their speech.
Therefore, earlier on, I had made this observation about Indo-Jamaican pronunciation:Also, the older Asians pronunciation “ole n-YEH-gah dem” can also have have a general lightness. The “nasal” inflexion is often added to it — often heard in the speech habits of Jamaican Indians — the women especially — but more in country areas.

That “nasal” inflection I heard, and still hear in speech of some descendants of Indian “coolies”, both Indian and even among mixed-race Indians, is simply a part of India’s languages and dialects, and… to my ear and the the ear of my Asian family and those close to them, it CAN be heard:
It’s even a joke among us!
However, I have never heard that inflection in the speech of Jamaican–black, brown, mixed-Chinese, Syrian, etc… Could ths be so because it is just not part of their speech tradition?

More:The nasal sounds are all distinguished according to their place of articulation. This in practice causes few problems when the nasal is in conjunction with one of its corresponding consonants. But some of them (ña ṇa na & ma) occur by themselves also, so again they must be recognised and pronounced according to their correct position. The sound of each can be found by pronouncing them before a member of their group, e.g. first ṅ as in ink. The pronunciation of ña is as in canyon, or the Spanish word señor. The letter ṁ represents the pure nasal which is sounded when the air escapes through the nose only.http://www.buddhanet-de.net/ancient-buddhist-texts/Reference/The-Pronunciation-of-Pali.htm

Regarding Hindi used by “coolies” transported to Fiji:
“..The consonant “n” is used in Fijian Hindi for the nasal sounds “ṅ”, “ñ” and “ṇ” in Indian Hindi. These features are common in the Eastern Hindi dialects.[8]”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiji_Hindi

I have sometimes wondered about the distinct, high nasal sound I have (often) heard among female relatives of Indian descent, sometimes during speech and sometimes during singing. Apparently, this is not unsual.
Keith Cochrane, Professor of Music at San Juan University’s Department of Music says that the:The regional difference between the Hindi-related language groups of the North with their related …. nasal vocal timbre (female voice has an especially unusual timbre).

Read how the “coolies” are treated on the boat. Keep in mind that that was already the 20th century.

Some Americans know that Chinese coolies were imported to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Fewer know that they were imported to build and open the mines. But how many know they were imported to dig and build the Panama Canal? Even I did not know that.

I also read that they were used to repair and rebuild the Augusta Canal in Augusta, Georgia after the Civil War (in addition to working on nearby cotton plantations). I am starting to wonder how many US infrastructure projects were built by “coolie” labour.

Do you know where Indian coolies to Jamaica hailed from and their linguistic origin? Before it sounded like you were not sure. Should we confirm that before we speculate how their origins might impact their use of patois?

Also, I wonder if there is any research on Indian coolies to the USA (or by USA govt or corporate interests), or from other non-Chinese origins. Or was it focused to the British colonies due to the connection of India to the British empire? But I noticed certain non-British colonies countries like the Dutch East Indies (Surinam) arranged to import Indians there. Were there reciprocal agreements to ship people from Indonesia to the British colonies?

Do you know where Indian coolies to Jamaica hailed from and their linguistic origin? Before it sounded like you were not sure. Should we confirm that before we speculate how their origins might impact their use of patois?

Wow, Jefe. Are you sure you have it the right way round? 😉
You haven’t been misreading what I have said on this thread, have you?
I thought I touched on possible places and language earlier. You thought that information too vague.

I’d like to spend time and thought to the subject, but do you recollect that you asked me whether I’d write about this subject in the “Manila Galleons” thread? What I said then was that I was reluctant to do so. I’m still cautious about it.

The reason I gave was that I don’t think I know enough.
I have read a couple of books on the subject (David Dabydeen was mentioned earlier, as was Gaiutra Bahadur on another thread, for example), but I have others that remain unread.
I have only dipped into Carter and Torabully’s “Coolitude”, for instance.
Colin Clarke’s book on South Asians abroad hasn’t even been glanced at, George Abraham Grierson’s colonial survey of India’s languages is lent out, etc. You hold me to quite a standard…Yes, I admit to having read papers by Verene Shepherd, Madhavi Kale, Rhoda Reddock, and a several others about the “coolies” from India, but I haven’t accessed that info or pushed myself to gather my thoughts to answer all your questions. I have told you why, as well.
You’ve asked a few questions yourself here, and I haven’t even tempted to answer them for the reasons already given.
As I have said already, right now, my energies and time are focused on matters off line. Also, I’m ambivalent and reluctant about this subject, for personal reasons.

You found it vague, but I indicated the region where these particular “coolies” were from and the language(s) they spoke. They were mostly from the Indo-Gangetic Plain in Asia, and even those from the south of India, the Tamil and Telegu speakers, the “nasal” intonations is also pronounced: links about that are also available for that if anyone wishes to search for them.
Perhaps many of the languages of India have this nasal characteristic, but perhaps I’ve also underestimated how ‘wild’ the suggestion of it could be, or that it could have any impact whatever on at all, since I don’t share Linda’s PoV on heard — or unheard — nuances.

I think it’s reasonable to speculate that if the nasal intonation is marked among the speakers from this part of Asia (apparently it looks that way), then it might also be reasonable to say that that intonation could manifest in another language, and that that intonation would be heard by their familiars?
Just for contrast, I’ve been in the company of England-born children, who have Yoruba grandparents, yet I recognise a turn of phrase and inflexions that are not dissimilar to other West Africans when they speak English, yet these children were never in Nigeria — but that’s speculation.
However…..it’d be better to confirm how their orgins might impact on their use of English first, because such nuances would never, after all, have anything to do with their families’ origins.

You are asking for too much if you expect many descendants from the Indo-Caribbean population to possibly know the precise places, the exact villages (if they still exist) their ancestors hailed from. I for one, would dearly love to know where place-names in India that Indo-Jamaicans came from.
It was not as if the administration of their recruitment and transfer was uniform and well-ordered, or that this information was readily retained as oral history.
Mostly not, it seems.
Could the reason be that the population was too fractured and hetergeneous for that?

Certain features: Jamaics sometimes received shipments of Indian Muslims, but planters preferred Hindus, as they were considered more docile and less prone to organisation and rebellion once ensconced in their barracks.
Not surprisingly (according to Shepherd’s writings on this), most shipments consisted of males, generally (in the case of Jamaica) at least 3 men to every woman.
The journey across the Dark Waters (‘Kali Pani’) was sometimes so shattering as to break caste, and this would not be easy to re-form and possible only IF the individual and family stabilised again in the new country.
Also, many of women were, in fact single when they sailed, but may have been marked as “married” on the shipment records. There were a few reasons for this, but one, certainly, was the fear of epidemic breakout when large numbers of children were present at depots and on ships. Therefore, no family with more than 2 children was allowed on the ships, and no commission for recruiters for kids under 12. That was the policy up until 1910. After that, recruiters were incentivized to recruit women by increased commission per female head, but I don’t know how much that impacted numbers.

The sub-agents acting for the licensed recruiters, the Arkatlas in Kolkata and the Kutty Maistries in Madras, scouted the villages in the regions for takers. They were paid by head, or commission, which led to abuses of the system, so if records exist (at all) should they be trusted?

Some recruiters operators without license.
Source areas? Not easy to answer.
At the time, labour was wanted by the Assam tea gardens, and recruiters had originally plundered (is that the right word? maybe…) the hilly areas of Orissa and Burma for what is are now called the “tribal” groups such as the Arakies, Nilgirees or Banjaras. Numbers of them formed some of first groups to be freighted to Reunion, and Mauritius. I don’t recall seeing anything that said any of the “Hill Coolies” ended up in Jamaica.
What is clear though, is that the source of labourers was not always the same for each colonial destination for each year. Labour quotas for Guyana and Trinidad were usually filled first.
That left Surinam and Jamaica to forage to fill theirs, an altogether tougher task as the pay for a “coolie” was less for these 2 latter destinations.

One thing: I am not sure why Abagond has said most Indian “coolies” repatriated back to India. Sure, some did, and some of them acted as recruiters in turn. I think returnee patterns depended on final destination;
I have no doubt Abagond’s info is correct, but it simply sounds unlikely for the mostly poorly paid of the “coolies” to have done so.

Do I know the precise part of India my own Indian ancestors are from? No way. I’ll only say that the ones that have travelled to the subcontinent, have always been mistaken for Punjabis. They don’t kwow why.

It was mainly a British trade, with some French interests. As for Guyana, didn’t the British take up where the Dutch finished?

Jefe, as I said earlier, I could say more, but a little patience please.

“Bulanik,
That “nasal” inflection I heard, and still hear in speech of some descendants of Indian “coolies”, both Indian and even among mixed-race Indians, is simply a part of India’s languages and dialects, and… to my ear and the the ear of my Asian family and those close to them, it CAN be heard:
It’s even a joke among us!

However, I have never heard that inflection in the speech of Jamaican–black, brown, mixed-Chinese, Syrian, etc… Could ths be so because it is just not part of their speech tradition?”

Linda says,

I understand what you are saying about the Indian women speaking with a higher “nasally” sound or tone on certain words…I’ve also heard it… I don’t disagree with you on that…

but I as I’ve said, the old people I’ve heard say the word “Nay-gah”, all sounded the same to me regardless of race/ethnicity — I always put the drawl down to age, because speech changes when people get older.

to me, I don’t hear any significant difference in the speech of Jamaican Indians when they speak, from anyone else.

Here is a clip of a Jamaican Indian who is explaining the model he built for Hosay. If you close your eyes, you couldn’t distinguish his speech pattern from black, brown, or mixed race–to me, he sounds like any Jamaican man on the corner:

Thanks for all your feedback. I am just asking out of curiosity. Don’t sweat over it.

But, you *kinda* support another point I believe. Many non-Asians believe that persons of Asian descent (even those descendant from the Coolie importation era) in the Americas know where their ancestors came from, what languages they spoke, etc. I already knew that people only have vague ideas that their ancestors come from some undetermined area in India or China, and not sure what dialects they spoke, which is almost as vague as pointing to regions in West Africa and speculating what languages the ancestors of persons of African descent in the Americas.

The children of my cousins have no idea where their ancestors came from. If they want to know, their parents tell them to ask their “uncle”, because I have been there several times.

I thought, perhaps, you might have researched it more than most. But really, NO SWEAT.

Could the reason be that the population was too fractured and hetergeneous for that

Could be. Especially if they split up children from their parents and sent them on boats to different destinations.

For the Chinese ones, the workers were almost entirely male. The ones in the USA came almost entirely from one of 2 counties in the same region. When they sent women over (either as prostitutes pre-exclusion, or as paper daughters post-exclusion), they generally came from the same region. So this history is somewhat traceable. Almost 90% of of the ones to Jamaica were Hakka speakers and from adjacent counties in the same region also. If you recall the example that Linda provided, the woman and her siblings in Harlem traced their Chinese side by contacting the Hakka association in Toronto.

I am not sure why Abagond has said most Indian “coolies” repatriated back to India. Sure, some did, and some of them acted as recruiters in turn. I think returnee patterns depended on final destination;
I have no doubt Abagond’s info is correct, but it simply sounds unlikely for the mostly poorly paid of the “coolies” to have done so.

Most of the Chinese did not return, yet you can still find the influence of the overseas Chinese and the original coolie trade back in the relevant districts in China. As I mentioned, there is a UNESCO heritage district in Kaiping which consists of scores, if not hundreds of watchtowers built by returned overseas Chinese, some from USA and Canada. In Taishan (as I told you before), there is a statue in the main square of a returnee from Seattle who built the first railroad in Southern China.

When I went to Xiamen in Fujian, you can notice the huge influence of the Filipino Chinese there.

YET, most of them did not go back to China.

So, indeed, I was wondering, if most of the Indian coolies went back to India, they must have left a mark back in India. In fact, I would even expect that to include many Afro-Indians.

@ Jefe — I have a heavy project on, so visits to this blog-site serve only as breaks to take my mind off of it right now. Thanks for understanding.

You say:

I thought, perhaps, you might have researched it more than most…

I have.
But: my approach is not always to simply take the well-trodden path provided by standard research or accepted wisdom.
But I am reluctant to put my mouth in it too loud and too fast, because I feel — as regards Indo-Jamaicans, for example — that the truth of the many “Coolie Odyssies” that exist has far more of Asia in their psychological landscapes and family legacies than conventional scholarship has yet expressed.

I already knew that people only have vague ideas that their ancestors come from some undetermined area in India or China, and not sure what dialects they spoke, which is almost as vague as pointing to regions in West Africa and speculating what languages the ancestors of persons of African descent in the Americas.

For the Chinese ones….the ones in the USA came almost entirely from one of 2 counties in the same region. When they sent women over ….this history is somewhat traceable.

Omg. YOU SEE THE PROBLEM. 🙂
Sometimes only fragments are retained.
So, can you understand my frustration when I say, for instance, that I can hear the nasal inflexions of Indic languages in Jamaican patwa when spoken by those of Indian descent? It would be like saying the various kinds of Englishes spoken by people of African-descent in Caribbean or the US may bear no relation to any African languages because we shouldn’t dare to speculate on any impact on language without first knowing this or that…?

Thus, what I researched left me unsatisfied, with questions that “bothered” me: definitive answers are elusive.
They might not even be that “definitive” at all!

For the “coolies”, so much was broken on the ships and on the plantations.
Was it a time of forgetting?
A section of my Asian family still recoil at the sting of being called “Barrack Coolie”, and regarded as the basest of all. There is a story behind that.

What about the determination to remember, in contrast?
Cultural retention is a decision that small racial minorities have to make, and usually keep within families and choose not to share with the wider populace.

Some populations were under more pressure than others, to assimilate: through Christianization, Westernisation, Europeanisation, through stigma and shame…and weren’t these were people that arrived already colonized</b.
This was 19th century Asia, after all.

Perhaps some factors apply more to the Indian "coolies" over the the Chinese ones?

Orientalism certainly played its part in Sinology, but to what extent did this impact on the trade in "coolies" in China?
By the 19th century when the trade started in India, the Indian population already had chunks of their cultural wealth and religious belief systems appropriated and corrupted by European Indologists who had in them instilled them a sense inferiority — as mentioned earlier — long before they arrived in the Americas. The fruit of that probably never went away.

For the “coolies”, so much was broken on the ships and on the plantations.
Was it a time of forgetting?

I guess this says a lot.

After reading that the same ships used to ship African slaves were used for Asian coolies and thinking about their taking young children and “breaking them in”, I think they probably receive the same kind of cultural and psychological oppression as Africans, esp. the ones from India. For one thing, they left a place that had already been colonized by Britain, and shipped to another British colony.

What is different between the ones from China and India? (my speculation)

* Britain held HK and the Portuguese held Macau, but not the actual places where the “coolies” came from. They relied on middlemen to bring them to the ports and sell them into servitude.
(The British could just snatch up people anywhere they were in India and transport them anywhere they wanted to – I suspect there was less need to use middlemen to funnel them into British hands – they would look for vulnerable people and take them.)

* Chinese coolies had not been colonized by Europeans before going to the Americas. (Indians had been colonized by the British already and entered the overseas plantations with colonized mentalities).

* The ones going to USA / Canada hailed from the same region in China and spoke mutually intelligible dialects. This would help them bond on the ship and after they arrived.
(If the ones from India came from different regions, speaking different languages and funneled to different countries / plantations, maybe less opportunity for them to bond with each other based on culture they brought from India. It would also make it easier for the British to beat it out of them. They would bond later with each other based on their similar experience (of oppression) on the ships and in the plantations, but less so based on a shared language and cultural heritage.)

* The exclusion act and Ethnic violence towards Chinese in the USA and exclusion from the rest of society caused them to huddle close together in Chinatowns for safety and protection, where they could continue to retain some culture and language, while bonding on other issues in common (eg, taking matters to court, or figuring out how to bring a son or wife over).
(If Indian culture and languages were beat out of the Indian labourers, they would not use this as a mechanism for bonding with each other.)

* The ability to retain some cultural and language ties (and orientation towards making money as the motivation to leave china) actually helped them to become merchants and form self-help societies. If this had been mostly beaten of Indians by the time they arrived, they would not have this resource.

I think the Chinese in Jamaica followed a model more similar to the ones in Mississippi rather than the ones in California or NY, except.
– Jamaica is small and close knit
– Jamaica did not have a binary apartheid system that forced Chinese to abandon the Afro-Chinese families like they did in the US South.

Love the Hosay in Jamaica clip!
I like how our man casually refers to Trinidad at around 07.37 and makes references to cultural things kept and passed down from his elders.

***
In your comment, you attribute the pronuniciation of the word “Nay-gah”, to “age, because speech changes when people get older”.

Yet, whllst you understand what I saying about the Indian women speaking with a higher “nasally” sound or tone on certain words, you’ve also heard it, and don’t disagree with me on that, you do not say what that inflexion might be attributable to.

I am trying to get my head around this coolie trade stuff too. It looks like information may be difficult to find, esp. for the ones from India.

Ones from China had middlemen, so we might be able to find orders for workers, dockets on ships, records of ship sailings, etc. Might be easier to trace.

And unlike today, we have many people working in the forced human anti-traff1ck1ng movement.We can have some general ideas of how people get from point of origin to destination. To research the 19th century would be an onerous task, even for the most dedicated historian.

…could you clarify which groups of Indians returned to India.
Do you mean most Indians that went to Malaysia or Sri Lanka returned home, or what?

I have yet to read anything about the indentured Indian labourers in either of those countries, or Burma for that matter.
Elsewhere though, most seems to have settled in the countries they were sent to. Could you give a more detailed patten of those that returned — or point to a breakdown of numbers from which nations?

From page 260 of “The Human Web” (2003) by J.R. and William McNeill, one of my sources:

“About 1 million Indians went to Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Natal (South Africa), or Fiji to work in canefields, mostly as bonded laborers, and 4 million (mostly free migrants) to Malaya’s rubber plantations and tin mines. Some 2-3 million, mostly Tamils from southern India, went to Sri Lanka, to work on tea plantations. Several million more wen to Burma; most, like most migrants to Sri Lanka and Malaya, came home again. Indians supplied the bulk of the labor needed to keep the mines and plantations of the British Empire going until the contract labor system was ended in 1917. Some 30-40 million Indians migrated in all (1830-1913), and 3-6 million stayed put overseas.”

It makes sense that most returned since the Indian diaspora is not as big as the African one:

It is possible, of course, that Indians were worked to death at a greater rate or reproduced at a lower rate than Africans.

The size of the Indo-diaspora may well be due to those factors.
I am probably more inclined to believe this was likely in some locations at least. For “most” to have the resources — or health — to return home after slaving in nightmarish conditions for the best of their lives just doesn’t seem likely in many circumstances. I’ve read accounts of their skeletal remains occasionally being found in Guyanese cane fields (through starvation), early death from disease caused insanitary living conditions and poor diet, along with the usual shortage of women and isolation.

As for the Indian Tamils that went to Sri Lanka, many of the labourers died on the way to the tea plantation, as they (men, women, children) had to walk the 150 mile distance to get there and, it seems, many more died of the disease, malnutrition and overwork after they arrived.

Later on in the trade, the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, apparently: “…did not want to take back the Indian Tamils {from Sri Lanka}because that would have created a precedent for the rest of the Indian expatriates scattered throughout the world by the British…”
Repatriation continued to be patchy after that.http://infolanka.com/org/srilanka/cult/32.htm

It seems India’s government may have wanted to rid itself of as much of its paupers as possible, i.e., the poorest of its lowest castes as well as its Dalits (“Untouchables”) from the South of India. The ones that lived at subsistence. The ones that had survived the severest famines created by British rule — and were, therefore, not keen on their return…?

Burma’s “coolies” were mainly made up of Indian Telugus (rather than Tamils) and not family groups, with women making up only 16 to 21% of the Telugu population. As they were known to settle where they worked, they have been described as “temporary employees” who could save their earnings or send money home before returning to India. Though wages were low, they could earn more in Burma than India.

Also, what about the ones who had to stay because they trapped in debt? They had to pay for passage, food, accommodation — all paid for in advance. They would therefore start off in debt, and continue to be charged, as well as being charged for medical help or even fined for illness, or days off. They might’ve been treated no better than at home, just a little better paid.
George Orwell mentioned the status of “the damn Coringhee coolie” in passing whilst he was in Burma.http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph

Another element was that the most lowly Indian could re-cast himself (literally) (with a lot of luck) by becoming a Buddhist and take advantage of any social mobility on offer in a new country.

The ability of some Indian “coolies” to trace their precise origins in Asia varies from colony to colony. Some can, and some can’t.

The ones that can had Emigration Passes issue to them. In theory, I should say. Many of those freighted to Fiji and Trinidad appeared to have a form of these Passes, the ones to Surinam, Jamaica apparently did not.
(That’s how it seems, at least.)

On the “Interracial Relationships” thread from last year, I commented on Trinidad’s population of female indentured labourers, and stumbled on that country’s East Indian Immigration Records; there are various archives dedicated to those who arrived in Trinidad between the years 1845 and 1917.
General, Estate and Ship registers.

Even though the Ministry that handles these affairs admits to considerable missing gaps in this record-keeping, the range of detail is still impressive:The General Registers contain such information as the ship number, the registration number of the immigrants, their sex, age, height, caste, bodily marks, their fathers name, the name of the village they came from, the date of indenture, the name of the plantation to which they were assigned, whether they returned to India or not and a remarks column that relayed information on such matters as whether they died on board the ship or had children during the voyage.

Estate registers include information such as the names, registration numbers and sex of immigrants, their fathers name, annual fees paid to them, date of their indenture and the estate to which they were assigned. Ship Registers consist of an emigration pass confirming the immigrants’ fitness to work and detailing information such as the name of the ship on which they arrived in Trinidad, the date of its arrival, the name of the immigrants, their caste, father’s name, the immigrants’ sex, age, next of kin, the district and village in India from which they came, their occupation and whether they were married and to whom they were married.

Smaller categories within the holdings of the Archives include:
The Report of the Protector of Immigrants which relay the conditions under which the indentured labourers worked and recommendations for their improvement;
Emigration passes which contain information similar to that found in the ship registers and records of monies sent back to India by the immigrants to their relatives there.
The East Indian Immigrants arrived with an Emigration Pass which was completed in India. In Trinidad, his/her General Register Number, estate of indenture and details of sickness, if any, were added. Even those who died at sea had their Emigration Passes brought to Trinidad and kept there. The Emigration Pass also contained depot numbers and ship numbers and from 1886, a sub-depot number. These three numbers were restarted with each new batch and were not unique to the Immigrant as was the General Register number. However these numbers were helpful in showing the relationship among families who emigrated together. Usually the father had the earliest number consecutively followed by the mother, the sons, and daughters, then infant sons and daughters. Obviously those born at sea were given neither depot numbers nor ship numbers…

One telling feature of the Emigration Pass was a related, administrative document that remained in India:

4. In India, apart from the Emigration Pass, the indentured Indian also filled out an ‘Intention to Emigrate’ form. Some of these documents made their way to Trinidad. Perhaps these documents were kept in India as well and could be retrieved. This document was even more detailed than the Emigration Pass, because it contained information on the Indian’s property in India and to whom it was to be assigned.

Now, before I forget: I recollect reading about similar record-keeping about the Agreements of Indenture for labourers heading for Fiji.
I’m afraid I can’t remember the author, book or reference, but the film that follows touches on the same thing.

The Girimits or Girmitiyas (from “Agreement”) had their details filled on for them…they signed with a thumb dipped in ink…

Also, it is unclear whether they spoke the same language or dialect as the record keeper, or whether the record-keepers simply wrote down whatever he thought fit, or just made assumptions about the origins, caste and so on of the illiterate, confused and frightened numbers who poured in day after day.
After all, most had been lied to about where they were going and what they would be doing when they got there…

Regarding the Girmits (comment in mod): Australia’s National Library keep the records of their departure and arrivals in its archives.
These include:

…the combined records of Indian Indentured Labourers of Fiji, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago {which}were placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

Amongst others these included the Indian Emigration Passes to Fiji for the period 1879 to 1916.

Earlier, I said Suriname and Jamaica had a similar fate.
From these records though, it seems that Suriname’s indentured labourers, though similar in nature to Jamaica’s population — both comprising a small and fragmented assortment of Asians from areas that are now East Pakistan, North West and North East India and today’s Bangladesh — had more retrievable records of their origins than any of the smaller Indo-Caribbean / Indo-diasporic populations.http://www.nla.gov.au/research-guides/indian-emigration-passes-to-fiji-1879-1919

I’ve never accessed any shipping o quarantine records in Jamaica myself.
My brother has though, just briefly, but his search has yielded little.
It seems many that came from Asia were simply named, and buried, as “COOLIE”, simple as that.
Sidenote: he did remark on passing through the border of Trelawny and St Ann, and noticed that the names “Bengal” or “Bengal Bay” came into view. Why would that Region’s name be a place-name in Jamaica?
Was this beach in some way reminiscent of another Bay in Bengal?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwEPTMj2Wyc)

According to a report from the island of St Vincent:These Indians had one name only. They did not have surnames. Those who were baptized into the Roman Catholic Church were usually given English names and surnames. Sometimes the same name (John Thomas, for example) would be given to several Indians who were baptized within a few consecutive days of each other….consigned to different estates and while living on the estates they were christened and given Christian names.
They were given the names of the overseers…” (Osley Baptiste, family of Rambulock Singh, Hindu Pundit)http://www.indocaribbeanheritage.com/content/view/43/64/

Then, there is The Idea of the NRI, the non-resident Indian.
Those are citizens of India who live, work and study outside of that nation.
Additionally, there are persons of Indian origin (PIO). Thiis “is a person of Indian origin or ancestry who was or whose ancestors were born in India or nations with Indian ancestry but is not a citizen of India and is the citizen of another country”. That would apply many Indo-Caribbeans — even though many would be more accurately Bengali- or Pako-Caribbeans, etc.!

I take Abagond’s point about the African diaspora.
Yet, the Roma of Eastern and Southeastern Europe (who are not “coolies” of course) are people of India.
So are the creators of flamenco, Spanish Gypsies.
These groups migrated out of Rajastan.
Only recently have I seen them referred to as Indo-diasporic, or heard of flamenco referred to as an Indo-diasporic cultural-form.

According to India’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs, India has the second largest diaspora in the world after overseas Chinese. Why don’t they consider the bigger African diaspora as “the biggest”!?

It seems like the story of a Chinese *coolie* coming to the USA in the mid 1850s, later working on the railroad in the 1860s and then on the run in the 1870s for allegedly raping a white woman. The trailers showed a scene where posses went from town to town, trying to exterminate the Chinese population.

I find it interesting because in addition to ethnic Chinese, the plot also involves Mexicans and blacks in the “Wild West”. All of the other Hollywood movies about the Wild West were about white cowboy outlaws and sheriffs, and occasionally included invasions and attacks by Native Americans. It is nice to see a story that actually included Chinese, Mexican and black characters.

I see some very recognizable Hollywood faces in that movie, so it must not be a purely Amateur production. It’s reviews are so-so though.

But, written and produced by a Trinidadian born Chinese American maybe it is not such a traditional “white saviour” movie.

Was thinking about deliberately caused famines in Asia, after stopping by Abagond’s “democide” thread. How did that work with the indentureship?

Famine and slavery go hand in hand and go way back.
The British deliberately caused famines in India, and their own figures put the death rate to that at a conservative 85 million over the period of rule.
I haven’t checked the background to that, but, if the last famine was in 1943 that killed at least 3million was anything to go by, then, over a couple of centuries of rule, 85 million Indian dead might be the tip of the iceberg of the true toll (and might be a truly staggering figure).

Nevertheless, one reason for engineering famines during the British Raj, was to force India’s population into relief works, such as road building.

Other times, it was simple a game of economics, shifting provisions to feed labour forces, at the cost of millions of lives.
Take the famine of 1838, when the farmers had produced enough rice to feed the population, yet millions of pounds of rice and other grains were exported from Calcutta, to Mauritius, a 3,500 miles away — to feed the kidnapped “coolie” workforce who had been freighted there…

That particular famine was in present-day Uttar Pradesh, was the hardest hit and is well-known as the main origin of many of the India coolies taken to the Americas during this period.

It’s possible that their descendants are not counted as part of THAT diaspora.
Perhaps as plain ole black instead, or plain ole some other, or something else?

Many of India’s indentured labourers, as Abagond suggests, may have been worked to death, and this might account for their relatively low numbers.
I believe the under-estimation of deaths is a factor, although “over-work” might overstate the conditions that survivors endured.

But even if under-estimated death-toll is part of it, then what made these particular populations more susceptible to death under these (terrible) conditions than other slaving populations, such as the Chinese or enslaved Africans?

Previously I said that the Indian workers of the Caribbean were sometimes slurred with characterisation that they were “weak” or “dirty”.
(Note: I’ve still heard these particular descriptions used by the non-Indian population when talking about Indo-Caribbeans, and in wider society, too.)

If many came out of a region, and at a time, that was experiencing — and had been experiencing — regular famine, what physical state did these people arrive in, if they had survived at all the foetid conditions of the ships that had freighted them there?

I recollect writings of David Arnold, a historian with particular interest in Asia.
What he said was that the chronic malnutrition that resulted from famine forced populations to adopt behaviours that further exposed them to infection and long-term delibiliation. Such as, consumption of “surrogate foods” like roots and leaves, or drinking contaminated water where there was no other.
It was also customary for the colonial masters to blame outcomes like this onthe filth of the natives themselves. And also this: to blame the victims as fatalistic and passive, a direct product of their unclean and degenerate culture(religions?).

Even if the workers survived famine, and transport, they may have harboured infections for the rest of their lives in insanitary barracks and pest-ridden cane fields. That along with inadequate diet, whippings BEFORE being over-worked.

(Jefe, it’s been a long while, and I don’t know now which of David Arnold’s writings details that…)

I believe there’s another side to the induced famine-state imposed on the India population that forced them into destitution and indentured servitude.

Diseases such as dysentry and cholera were one aspect of what became of the “coolie” population after they left Asia.
Nonethe;ess, I believe the venereal disease model also had a part to play not only in indentureship, but also in the way that Asians are gendered and sexualised in general. What the occuping British military also invested the Indian populations they met with was ALSO a venereal-disease model that flattered the heterosexuality of the European Conqueror.

One writer, Douglas Peers, made the observation that colonial societies were perceived and ranked by their masculinity. The British colonial was pure manhood and his power made him more male over the conquered.

It comes as no surpriese that the idea of “India” was gendered, or that the European was always male and the Indian always effeminate.*

Therefore, the (hetero)sexual behaviour of the white European soldier was not to be curtailed or held responsible for anything.

Thus, any diseases the European man contracted was the fault of the Asian woman he frequented.

This was a strictly racial and a gendered discussion and perception.
The world was ordered.

The general smearing of Indian men as effete and effeminate and the Indian woman as diseased and born-sex slaves (by caste, presumably).
This extended to the idea that many women who entered the ships bound for labourers on plantations were, in fact, prostitutes.
For a time, the Indian women who were indentured were considered the “sweepings of the bazaar”, or the inmates of Lock Hospitals (the hospitals used to confine and treat women with Venereal Diseases). Simply the “harlots of empire”.

I was looking for context, some evidence in official perspective that backed this up. I found Medical History of British India, as supplied by the National Library of Scotland, which said:

….Western medicine acquired superior status and the British started campaigning against non-European forms of medicine, priding themselves on their scientific understanding of disease causation. The gulf between western and eastern medicine was further widened as English became India’s official language….

Government attitude to prostitutes

The authorities showed little desire to prevent prostitution, only aiming to control it to prevent the spread of disease. There were two problems which are explored in the reports:

*Soldiers having intercourse with unregistered, often diseased prostitutes who lurked around the forts
*The lack of attractive-looking prostitutes in the regimental brothels…

Do you know anyone blogging about the Asian diaspora from the coolie trade (or some scholar who has specialized in it)? It seems that there is tons / heaps / loads more stuff on the African diaspora from the transatlantic slave trade.

Something doesn’t add up about the whole thing. We can explain at least some of the Chinese coolie trade stuff (still that has many missing parts), but the Indian coolie trade seems much of a mystery.

Since the history has largely disappeared, that probably means that most of the people themselves disappeared. If they were still here (whether as descendants of returnees to India or descendants overseas) we would see much more about it.

So either they
– died or died out
or
– they have assimilated into someone else’s diaspora (ie, their descendants are modern day white or black people or some mixed creole race somewhere else).

I suspect that it is overwhelmingly the former.

If that is the case, then the death toll from the Indian coolie trade dwarfs that of the transatlantic African slave trade.

At least the topic was brought up enough about the idea that Abagond posted something about it, but it is still depicted as a miniscule sidebar to the transatlantic slave trade and the African diaspora.

You ask anyone in Europe, the Americas and Africa about the transatlantic traff1cking of Africans and most know something about it. They know it has something to do with slavery and when it took place. (I admit that probably many in China may not be that familiar with it).

But the Asian coolie trade, esp. the South Asian part of it, is thunderously silent. In fact, most in Europe, the Americas, even Asia are not even familiar with it, despite its magnitude and sheer death toll eclipsing that of the African slave trade. There is a story out there that is not being told.

Also something from that movie trailer struck me that makes me want to see how they depicted the Chinese coolie trade to the USA.

It was when the men were hanging themselves on ropes down the cliffs to insert dynamite, with many falling to their deaths or dying from the explosions. Then the white overseer said that they need to speed up work and need to recruit some more ch1n@men. Evidently the brother of the protagonist died from one of those incidents (hard to figure out from the trailer).

I want to see how the movie addressed the labour importation in the West in the 1860s and I might work further to trace how it links up with the importation into the US south in the 1870s.

There is a personal reason too. My great grandfather first arrived in the USA in the 1860s as a very young man, maybe a teenager specifically to work on the railroads. He went back and forth to China a couple times but eventually met his death in the USA around 1890. My grandfather first arrived in the 1920s and went back to get married and start a family. My grandmother came in the 1930s and my Aunts in the 1940s (others came as late as the 1960s or even 1980s). There was many decades of spread of people who trace their origin to the man who worked on the railroad.

I also heard that my grandfather’s sister was abducted to the Philippines to be someone’s wife there. There are a lot of stories I am trying to figure out too.

At least the topic was brought up enough about the idea that Abagond posted something about it, but it is still depicted as a miniscule sidebar to the transatlantic slave trade and the African diaspora.

Absolutely.
Abagond, in a sea of bloggers, DID bring up the subject at least, and what’s more, he has expressed a sincere curiosity about it that is elsewhere non-existent. But, I am not talking about Abagond. Not at all.
I fear you misunderstood me if you believed that I meant Abagond: I do not.

Rather, I mean that some of the toes that might get stepped on, re “Asian coolie trade, esp. the South Asian part of it …despite its magnitude and sheer death toll eclipsing that of the African slave trade…” are Afro-centric ones.

This ‘phenomenon’ of silence, and the blanket-like lack of interest, is not only the doing of British, French or Dutch colonialism.
Histories are created.
Some histories are encouraged and nurtured: the history of Africa and African diapora is underwritten and denigrated, yet in the retrieving of this history, does this mean there’s no space for the unfolded truth of the Indian sub-continent and the Indians? Why?
Clearly some histories are more shunned, as though they never were.

***

Might it be constructive to stand back for a moment…?
Let’s think for a moment about the Hellenistic world: think where it spread out and what part of the world it was connected to.

Do that, and ask who (some of) the dark-featured men and women were that the old Greeks referred to? I mean the dark faces east of the Nile, as far as the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean — doesn’t that bring us into Asia?
Were these people encountered, always, only, and “essentially”, Africans?
Couldn’t they be Indians, since there is only one civilization in Asia where the people are usually darker than the Greeks — why wouldn’t that be India…?
Or, is that unthinkable? If it is, then WHY is it unthinkable?

Alexander the Great conquered Persia and went on all the way to the Indus.
He did not go beyond the borders of Egypt, not to Nubia, for instance.
He did not conquer Morocco, or such — which would have been much easier for him to do. Instead he went eastward; he conquered the Persian empire, and into Afghanistan and India.

Consider too, that it might be no an accident that the stories of the birth of Christ include wisemen from the East, that is, from Asia: Persia and beyond, and not from the south or south west or beyond Egypt, as it would have been mentioned if it had been important to do so.

Also, in the apocryphal stories in which Jesus survives, he does not go to Africa but to Jammu & Kashmir, according to the legends.
Why there, of all places?
Because the whole Indian sub-continent was known to be the home of spiritual and scientific wisdom, it made sense for him to be there.

Yet, history I grew up is not written to reflect any of this.
Thus, “lands in the east” have always been explained away with China, as if India did not even exist, or was a insignificant to Asia.

In fact, I suspect that in some books and stories of the “mystical, rich east” means India and not China at all.

Look at the ancient trade routes around the Indian Ocean, and it seems all of them went to and from India across the seas.
The Chinese get credit for sea-faring, but the Indians are oddly earth-bound and land-locked… I’ve heard numbers of stories about the treasure ships of the moguls. What they were? Certainly not Chinese or Somalian boats, nor Arabian ships. They were indian ships.

But for some strange reason (?) we are to believe that everybody else but indians themselves sailed along these routes. Is it any surprise then, that the traditional Orientalist view of of India’s racial character is supposedly PASSIVE?

We already know that the culture, language and religions of the sub-continent was re-visioned, manipulated and re-written by Europeans
Would it be too far a stretch to consider this, too: that after the British conquest of the Indian sub continent, their history was quietly re-written and the version of Mighty India was WIPED OFF or diminished from the books that remained and formed what became Standard Knowledge.
Could some explanations of original sources also be falsified?

Jefe, where I am, it appears that I can’t seem to access much info about that film. Could you let me know if you find out more about it – I’d like to see it.
I also would be interested in who did the research for the film, and what the sources are.

And, the story of your grandfather’s sister, abducted to the Philippines to be someone’s wife. Wow.

This reminds me, too, of what I’d read in a few of “coolie” oddyssies: the women were commonly kidnapped and held before being shipped.
(I think it was something Brinsley Samaroo wrote about, but I’m not sure now.)

There a massive testimony from Cuba, 1874, where Chinese slaves recount their experience of their kidnap, transport and experience on Cuban plantations.

It’s from a book called “The Coolie Speaks” by L. Yun, and traces the emergence of a “coolie narrative” that forms a counterpart to the “slave narrative.” There are not many of these “coolie” narratives, right?

The book contains written and oral testimonies of nearly 3,000 Chinese labourers in Cuba, who toiled alongside African slaves, offer a rare glimpse into the nature of bondage and the tortuous transition to freedom. Trapped in one of the last standing systems of slavery in the Americas, the Chinese described their hopes and struggles, and their unrelenting quest for freedom.

Many (the majority?) of the descendents of these Chinese are Afro-Chinese Cuban, and may simply be classed as “Afro-Cuban”.

Btw, this book is part of a series on Asian American history and culture, including the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America.
From readings around it, researchers appear to say that the reason why so little is said or known about this type of slavery was due to “colonial administration of knowledge production”. The Asian slave, whether Indian or Chinese was deliberatey figured as:
— ambivalent, and,
— transitional.

Tellingly, there is regarding the use of the the word culi in Cuba.
It was not part of the Spanish dictionary until 1915.
Up until then, the Chinese worker-slave in Cuba were referred to as “los chinos”, “contratados” (contract labour) and “colono” (settlers).

This may have been the case in other Hispanic countries — not sure.
There are might be direct simiarities between Cuban and Chinese-Panamanians.

And, apparently the author gives the reason for this use, or non-use, of language, was not only deliberate, but strategic. The reasons vary, but essentially, there was a need to exploit the “mobility” and “flexibility” of the Asian slave. They could be therefore,
marketed,
sold,
re-sold,
rented,
lent-out,
named and renamed by owners, traders and police.
They were moved around from plantations, prisons, depots, and railways.
Listed as dead, disappeared, and hired all at the same time, but one for life by one and many. Very contradictory, wouldn’t you say!?

They were “disciplined” as slaves, but excluded from reference to enslavement.

I can help. Summarizing a book or even a chapter is a perfectly fine post so long as you make it clear that that is what you are doing. I do that sometimes. Those who knew nothing will know something, those who want to know more will know where to look.

If it makes it any easier, imagine you are writing a summary of part of that book to share with me (like you have been doing all along). Scan an illustration from the book if you can or find one that depicts what was discussed in the book.

BTW, looking at the timeline, it overlaps exactly with the period during Reconstruction when Chinese “coolies” were imported into the US South to work on sugar and cotton plantations. Some of the articles I read from books or John Jung’s website included newspaper notices encouraging plantation owners to import Chinese labourers because of how successful they were working out in Cuba. Some of the same coolie ships that transported workers to Cuba went on to New Orleans and Savannah to drop off more workers.

I do know that the social and cultural origin for both groups are from the exact same area in China, so much of what you read will apply to the USA also.

Some other analogies could be made, eg,
– working side by side black (ie, Afro-Cuban) workers and how or if they were used to control blacks.
– nature of black / white / Asian race relations
– how many, if not most of their descendants are now Afro-Cuban (or African-American in the case of the USA).

But if the author did not do that, you don’t have to unless you want to do further research on it. It would be a topic for further research and discussion.

Is that your own ideas, or did you lift it directly from a book? What is the source if you copied it from a book?

It is written from a particular point of view (a colonialist) or a post-colonial Singaporean or something, and glosses over certain ideas.

For example, the following sentence
“Most importantly, the Chinese merchant class served as a third party intermediary, or middlemen, for the European colonialists to exert indirect power over the indigenous peoples.” could have “the Chinese merchant class” replaced by “Eurasian” in places like India or Hong Kong or Macau. Whereas Eurasians generally had a different role in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

And, with tens of millions of descendants in SE Asia, certainly not “all” or even “most” ethnic Chinese have risen to economic prominence …..
Ethnic Chinese of every class level can be found in those countries.

Some have also become rather assimilated in their current homelands.

In Malaysia, different laws do apply to ethnic Chinese and Bumiputera (the name given to “native” peoples).

OK, now I get your idea. You were not aware that the bulk of the Chinese and Indian diaspora was actually created by the demand of Western countries and European colonial powers for cheap indentured / forced labour, esp. during the coolie trade period.

But not all of it can be explained this way. Indian and Chinese traders travelled to SE Asian and the Indian Ocean even before Europeans came. And some of the diaspora was created for other reasons (for example, due to political events in Asia).

I would not break it up in the categories that you did. In fact, I think Britain might need a category all by itself. In most respects, the North American coolie trade might have some more connections to Latin America and the Caribbean than to any in Europe. I think your breakdown might not represent well what was happening.

I am not sure (in fact, I do not believe) that the brain drain has already outnumbered the “old school” immigrants, as some of the old school immigrants have joined the professional class, and some of the new immigrants are directly related to the old school. The line has been blurred to some extent.

I think the established Chinese and Indian overseas communities served as a convenient nucleation point for the Europeans to expand and use as pawns in economically controlling their colonies.

I am not sure if we can explain the relationship in that way. There is some social break between the descendants of the pre-coolie migrants and the coolie descendants.

Have you been to Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, etc.? Malaysia has had a very strong policy to discourage ethnic Chinese immigration, so the vast majority (80-90%) are coolie descendant. In Singapore and Phils, you fill find a mix of all three.

Based on the numbers, I believe it has in North America, Australasia, and South Africa. I’m not sure if Europe had coolies, but the Chinese and Indians there seem to be largely brain drain, if not economic migrants.

Based on the numbers, we can be quite confident that brain drain forms the majority of ethnic Indians and Chinese in Australasia (AU & NZ), but a large part of that was the HK “astronaut” community, so I don’t know what you would call those.

and, Based on the numbers, we can be confident that most ethnic Indians in North America have brain drain origins as very few Indian coolies were brought to US or Canada.. I am not sure that we can confidently say that that applies to ethnic Chinese, however. It depends on how you define “old school” and “brain drain”. For me, if an old school family sponsored their relatives to come over in the 1980s-1990s and send their kids to school in the USA, I would still classify them as related to the old school, rather than brain drain. Many of the economic migrants, esp. the Cantonese, are directly or indirectly related to the old school ones. The numbers that you find might not accurately depict the nature of the immigration. I think that old school (by how I would define it) still exceeds brain drain, but brain drain has nearly caught up. Cantonese is still the most widely spoken dialect in the USA (and Canada for that matter).

(It is just like I dispute Abagond that the majority of Chinese immigrants in the decade following the effective date of Immigration and naturalization act were Taiwanese — as there are other categories (eg, family reunification) of immigrants that did not fall in that visa category. I would accept that the majority of immigrants who got visas not based on family reunification or on refugee status could have come from Taiwan.)

In any case, in certain geographical areas (eg, Silicon Valley, Plano, TX, / metro Dallas, metro DC/MD/VA, etc.) I do think that brain drain has already exceeded old school no matter how you add up the numbers. I do not think they would in SF or NY or Sacramento. LA, maybe.

They were initially brought as labour to replace emancipated black slaves, not unlike the ones who were sent to the US South after the Civil War. They also migrated to be shopkeepers serving the local labouring population, not unlike the ones in the US South too. But there the similarity starts to end.

the post African slave trade was essentially replaced by the Asian coolie trade, and the latter mirrored the former in most aspects and conditions
unlike the African slave trade, the Asian coolie trade was promoted mostly by Northerners, who apparently did not see the parallel in what they did compared to what the South did.